
Book ___. 



Copyright^". 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrc 



^2s/^^t^ 



ATONEMENT 



A BRIEF STUDY 



By S. M. MERRILL 



^ A just God and a Savior.*^ 
—Isaiah 



r ' 1 ^ I) 1 



CINCINNATI : JENNINGS A PYE 
NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
One Copy Received 

SEP. 16 1901 

CoPvqiQHT ENTRY 

CLASS C^XXc. No. 
COPY B. 






Copyright, 1901, by the 
Western Methodist Book Conobbn 



PREFACE. 

To WRITE a small book on a great theme, 
w^hich has been the subject of learned and 
able debate for centuries, is not an easy task. 
I have undertaken it because of strong per- 
suasion that some one ought to do it. 

Methodist writers have ably handled the 
subject of Atonement in large volumes, and 
in standard works on Systematic Divinity, 
so that the existing need is not for scientific 
and critical treatment, but for a plain state- 
ment of the doctrine, which will serve to 
guide and help those Vho do not read the 
more elaborate discussions. 

Thousands of our young people are con- 
tinuously exposed to adverse influences, aris- 
ing from loose and fallacious teachings in cur- 
rent litera'ture and popular pulpits, while 
3 



4 Preface. 

there is scarcely anytliing in the shape of a 
book of proper size to be put in their hands, 
which so presents the doctrines of the Ohurch 
as to be a safe guide through the perplexities 
created by Vhe erroneous statements and im- 
plications with which they are brought in 
contact. The need is for a concise statement 
of the doctrine^, with enough recognition of 
theories and controversies to awaken thought, 
and to put the reader on guard against the 
hasty acceptaiKje of plausible statements 
which are as misleading by their implications 
as by ijheir assertions. 

The aim of this little volume is to meet 
this demand. Of course, it is not exhaustive 
in any direction. It scarcely attempts a 
formal and consecutive argument on the main 
question. It avoids as much as possible deal- 
ing with original terms and translations, 
omits the critical examination of prepositions, 
and only touches the literature of the sub- 
ject. Much self-denial was required to keep 
out of these fields. It is hoped, however, that 



Preface. 5 

its statements are sufficiently clear and strong 
to be helpful to those needing help, and to 
assist in fortifying those who need to be forti- 
fied in this essential doctrine of our iaith. 

Those who read the ^^fathers^' and the 
writers of mediaeval times, and the discussions 
of the period of the Reformation, are not ex- 
pected to find much interest in this mono- 
graph. The readers of Watson, and Pope, 
and Raymond, and WOiedon, and Foster, and 
Miley, and other standard writers of our 
Church, will regard it as meager and unsatis- 
factory because of the omissions above noted; 
but it was not projected for the benefit of this 
class. There are scores of busy laymen, Sun- 
day-sc'hool teachers, officers of the Epworth 
League, and even young ministers, whose duty 
it is to help others of less experience than 
themselves, who may receive benefit from its 
perusal. It is designed to aid those who have 
not the time, or are not in circumstances to 
avail themselves of the advantages which 
large and costly books afford. 



6 Preface. 

Trusting that it will find a field of useful- 
ness, and prove that its mission is not an 
imaginary one, and that its adaptation is bet- 
ter than it seems to the writer, I send it forth 
with earnest prayer for the Divine blessing 
on book and reader. S. M. M. 



ATONEMENT. 



I. 

The subject of the Atonement is so related 
to the priestly office of Jesus Christ, that it 
can not he intelligently considered except in 
connection with that office. It is, therefore, 
important at the outset of our study, that we 
recognize the fact that he who is the Ee- 
deemer and Savior, is also the High Priest 
of our profession. The essential function of 
the priest is to offer sacrifice, and unless in 
the plan ordained for the salvation of men, 
there was a sacrifice to be offered to God, it 
is not easy to conceive why any priestly office 
was necessary, or why the Son of God s:hould 
be appointed 'to such an office. If he was 
7 



8 Atonement. 

indeed a priest, then of necessity he must 
make an offering, and such an offering as 
became him, and as became the condition and 
needs of those for whom he ministered. He 
was not a priest under the law in force at the 
time of his coming, and could not be, as he 
was not of the tribe of Levi, but of Judah,and 
therefore he could not officiate as a priest in 
the temple, nor in any place or capacity in 
any worldly sanctuary. If a priest at all, it 
was in a sense peculiar to himself, in which 
no one had ever been a priest before him, 
and no one could be after him. As he was 
unique in person, he was also unique in office 
and work, having a mission all his own, which 
could not be shared or imitated by men on 
earth or by angels in heaven. He was the 
Alpha and the Omega, the first and the Id^st, 
the only God and Savior. 

The Epistle to the Hebrews is devoted 
largely to this office, and was no doubt in- 
tended to supply an important link in the 
chain of revelation, by unfolding the signifl- 



Atonement. 9 

cance of the priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ. This is its distinguishing character- 
istic. It matters little to us whether this 
Epistle was written by Paul, or Apollos, or 
Barnabas, as its apostolic character is mani- 
fest on its face, and tihere is scarcely room 
for a doubt that it was approved by Paul, 
who inserted the personal salutations with 
which it closes. Although the name of the 
author is not given, it is very clear that it 
was the production of an ^^eloquent man,^^ 
and one who was ^^mighty in the Scriptures.^^ 
Its relation to the Old Testament is as strik- 
ing as its style and its general scope and de- 
sign. It has been appropriately called an in- 
spired commentary on the Levitical law, 
showing the typical character of the Mosaic 
institutions, and setting forth their spiritual 
import as adumbrations of the person and 
work of the Messiah. When read in the light 
of its relation to the typical economy and of 
its obvious purpose, many expressions in it 
which were otherwise obscure become lumi- 



10 Atonement. 

nous, wliile its argument becomes pertinent 
and convincing, revealing a depth and 
breadth and significance which place it in the 
forefront of the writings of the New Testa- 
ment, and give an indescribable charm to its 
expositions of the Divine method of rescuing 
men from sin and death through sacrifice. It 
was evidently written with an immediate view 
to meeting the wants of converted Hebrews, 
by leading them to the right method of inter- 
preting their Scriptures and their ceremonial 
services, and thereby confirming them in the 
faith of the gospel, and guarding them against 
the influences tending to draw them away 
from Christ and back to the law. 

The Jews from earliest childhood liad been 
impressed that it was impossible to worship 
God acceptably, or to come to him in prayer, 
except through the medium of the priestly 
office and the offering of sacrifice. This con- 
viction was wroug'ht into the very fibers of 
their being, and might not be removed. It 
was, therefore, necessary that they should 



Atonement. 11 

know that the gospel was not a system with- 
out a priest^ and without an altar, and without 
a sacrifice, as the Judaizing teachers con- 
tended; but that it had the true Priest, the 
true altar, and the true and all-sufficient sac- 
rifice. Thus this Epistle was admirably 
adapted to meet the wants of those to w^hom 
it was addressed, and also to meet the neces- 
sities of all who would understand the Holy 
Scriptures. It lifted thought from type to 
antitype, from form to substance, from the 
temporal to the eternal; and it showed that 
the redemptive work required the exercise 
of sacerdotal functions in the truest sense, 
and of the most literal and positive character, 
such as were impossible to any but the High 
Priest ordained of God. 

The first thing insisted upon was the high 
personal qualification of Jesus, the Christ, to 
be the High Priest in contemplation. In the 
very beginning of the Epistle his Divinity is 
asserted. He was the Son of God, the bright- 
ness of the Father's glory, the express image 



12 Atonement. 

of his person. He was superior to the angels, 
in that all the angels of God were required 
to worship him. "Unto the Son he saith. 
Thy throne, God, is for ever and ever; a 
scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy 
kingdom/^ In the next chapter 'his humanity 
is asserted with equal distinctness and force, 
declaring that, "Forasmuch as the children 
were partakers of flesh and blood, he also him- 
self likewise took part of the same;'^ and also 
"that in all things it behooved him to be 
made like unto his brethren, that he might 
be a merciful and faithful high priest in 
things pertaining to God, to make reconcili- 
ation for the sins of 'the people/^ Thus the 
High Priest of our profession is Divine and 
human, one with God and one with men, fully 
qualified as Mediator, Advocate, Priest, and 
Intercessor. 

Then, being thus introduced as a man, he 
is held before us in his human relations, and 
his dignity and greatness as a man are briefly 
indicated. First of all, he is greater than 



Atonement. 13 

Moses. This was to 'the Jew a most startling 
assertion, as Moses, the man of God, the law- 
giver and founder of the most sacred rites of 
worship, was the ideal man to Hebrew people; 
and yet the thought is presented so as not to 
be offensive. ^^Wheref ore, holy brethren, par- 
takers of the heavenly calling, consider the 
Apostle and High Priest of our profession, 
Christ Jesus; wtio was faithful to 'him that 
appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in 
all his house. For this man was counted 
worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch 
as he who hath builded the house hath more 
honor than 'the house. For every house is 
builded by some one; but 'he that built all 
things is God. And Moses verily was faithful 
in all his house as a servant, for a testimony 
of those things which were to be spoken after; 
but Ohrist as a Son over his own house, whose 
house are we, if we hold fast the confidence 
and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the 
end.^^ Without disparaging Moses, but cred- 
iting him with all that the people of his na- 



14 Atonement. 

tion claimed for 'him^ Jesus is exalted above 
him in personal dignity and office, as the 
Son of God, while Moses was a servant. 

The next point in the argument was to 
show 'that the Scriptures contemplated a 
change of the law of the priesthood, and the 
raising up of a priest of a different order from 
that of Aaron, and superior to him. This 
was essential, for if the law of the Aaronic 
priesthood were to abide forever, the attempt 
to prove to the Jews that Jesus of Nazareth, 
of the tribe Judah, was a lawful priest, would 
have been vain; for the answer to such an 
allegation was always at hand, in that Jesus 
was not of the tribe of Levi, and could not 
be a priest under the law. But there stood 
the prediction in their own Scriptures, and 
plainly in Messianic prophecy, that another 
priest should arise, not after lihe order of 
Aaron, but after the order of Melchisedec, 
who should be a priest forever, and by direct 
appointment from God. What could this 
prophecy mean, and what possible application 



Atonement. 15 

could it have, if the law restricting the 
priestly office to the tribe of Levi should never 
cease, or could never admit of an exception? 
When this Scripture was brought to the mind 
of thoughtful Hebrews, with its evident inten- 
tion to characterize the Messiah as a priest 
of God, it must have had a powerful influence 
in preparing them to receive other statements 
concerning the typical and temporary char- 
acter of the Aaronic priesthood — statements 
which in the absence of this prophecy would 
not have impressed them in the least. It was, 
therefore, not only important, but extremely 
judicious and wise, that the assertion of the 
necessary change of the law of the priesthood 
be made in connection with this very peculiar 
Messianic prophecy. It obviated prejudice, 
and shed light on what was to them a most 
perplexing obscurity. 

The end to be accomplished in this dis- 
cussion of the priesthood, was to satisfy the 
Hebrew converts that in adhering to Jesus as 
the Messiah, and recognizing him as the 



16 Atonement. 

Priest and Savior^ they need not abandon 
Moses, but rather ttiat it was the only way 
to honor Oiim, and rightly to interpret his laW;, 
and carry out his institutions to their ulti- 
mate significance and spiritual import. They 
were familiar with the law, and possessed the 
usual biases in favor of their ancient cere- 
monies; but they were somewhat enlightened 
with reference to the gospel, and their percep- 
tions were quickened as to spiritual things, 
so that appeals to their understanding touch- 
ing the higher meaning of their Scriptures 
were not likely to be lost upon them. This 
fact is recognized by the apos^tle in every step 
of his argument. He was not writing to 
heathens, nor to novices in the use of the holy 
writings, but to "holy brethren, partakers of 
the heavenly calling,^^ who were acquainted 
with the things he was seeking to elevate in 
their thoughts to their highest and best sig- 
nificance. They were also predisposed to ac- 
cept his interpretations, as they had become 
disciples, and were ready to hold fast to the 



Atonement. 17 

gospel if they could do it without abandoning 
Moses and Dhe prophets. This condition of 
things accounts for the brevity of the apostle's 
statements at some points where we might 
wish for greater elaboration. 

The next thing claiming attention is the 
fact, whic^h is given with emphasis, that this 
man, great as he was, did not assume the office 
of Priest without special authorization or 
direct appointment from God. ^^No man 
taketh this honor to himself, but he that is 
called of God as was Aaron.'' This recog- 
nition of the Divine appointment of the 
Aaronic priesthood and the call of Aaron 
was important, and the apostle gives it due 
prominence, making it the model and illus- 
tration of the call of Christ to the spiritual 
functions of that sacred office. ^^Ohrist glori- 
fied not himself to be made a high priest, 
but he that said unto him. Thou art my Son, 
to-day have I begotten thee.'' As Aaron was 
called of God, and as Melchisedec did not 
inherit the office from ancestors, but received 
2 



18 Atonement. 

it by immediate appointment from God, so 
Christ was called as was Aaron, and appointed 
as was Melchisedec, and made a priest forever 
after the power of an endless life. His com- 
mission was distinct, clear, unique. Although 
constituted a priest ^'^after the similitude of 
Melchisedec,^^ in that office he stood alone, 
having neither predecessor nor successor. His 
was an unchanging priesthood. 

His greatness in that ofl&ce is shown by the 
greatness of his person, by the greatness of 
his sacrifice, and the greatness of his achieve- 
ment. He was the Son and image of God, 
he offered himself, and he put an end to typ- 
ical offerings, and obtained eternal redemp- 
tion for men. Being superior to Moses, to 
Aaron, and to Abraham, he measures up to 
the pattern set in Melchisedec, to whom Abra- 
ham paid tithes, and from whom he received 
blessing. Melchisedec, king of righteousness 
and king of peace, was the typical priest of 
God, with none like him or equal to him, till 
the coming of the great Hig^h Priest. The 



Atonement. 19 

contrasts between Christ as priest and tlie 
priests under the law are numerous; such as 
that those of the Aaronic order are made 
priests by inheritance as sons of Levi, while 
he is directly appointed; they are admitted to 
the office without an oath, but he with an 
oath; and they can not continue in office by 
reason of death, but he continueth ever, hav- 
ing an abiding priesthood. In every respect 
he ranks all other priests, and so. fills the office 
as to supersede the necessity of any other 
priest on earth or in heaven. As all priests 
and all orders of priesthood were types of 
him and his office, and were fulfilled when 
he came and exercised his functions; so also 
in him, and with him, the priestly office was 
transferred from earth to heaven, so that since 
the day of his ascension there has been no 
priest in the Church on earth, as there is 
neither need nor room for any. 

The priests under the law offered gifts and 
sacrifices for sins, but they were offerings 
which could never take away sin. They were 



20 Atonement. 

bulls^ and goats^ and lambs^ offerings which 
could avail to the ceremonial purifying of the 
fleshy but could not purge the conscience 
from dead works. They were powerless as to 
the inner nature. "But Christ being come a 
high priest of good things to come, by a 
greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made 
with hands, that is to say, not of this build- 
ing; neither by the blood of goats and calves, 
but by his own blood he entered in once into 
the holy place, having obtained eternal re- 
demption for us. For if the blood of bulls 
and goats, and the ashes of a heifer sprink- 
ling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying 
of the flesh; how much more shall the blood 
of Christ, who throug'h the Eternal Spirit 
offered himself without spot to God, purge 
your conscience from dead works to serve the 
living God?^^ His was the priesthood of a 
better tabernacle, a better covenant, with a 
better offering, the only offering that could 
take away sin and purify the soul. The per- 
fection of this offering and service is seen in 



Atonement. 21 

the fact that it could not be repeated. "It 
was therefore necessary that the patterns of 
things in the heavens should be purified with 
these; but the heavenly things themselves 
with better sacrifices than these. For Christ 
is not entered into the holy places made with 
hands^ which are the figures of the true; 
but into heaven itself^ now to appear in the 
presence of God for us: nor yet that he should 
offer himself often, as the high priest entereth 
into the holy place every year with the blood 
of others, for then must he often have suf- 
fered since the foundation of the world; but 
now once in the end of the world hath he ap- 
peared to put away sin by the sacrifice of him- 
self. And as it is appointed unto men once 
to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ 
was once offered to bear the sins of many; 
and unto them that look for him shall he ap- 
pear the second time without sin unto salva- 
tion.^' One more passage may be cited, show- 
ing the completeness of the sacrifice, and the 
impossibility of repeating it. ^^By the which 



22 Atonement. 

will we are sanctified through the offering of 
the body of Jesus Ohrist once for all. And 
every priest standeth daily ministering and 
offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which 
can never take away sin. But this man, after 
he had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever 
sat down on the rig'ht hand of God; from 
henceforth expecting till his enemies be made 
his footstool. For by one offering he hath 
perfected forever them that are sanctified.^^ 
We sum up, then — that Jesus Christ was 
the one and only great High Priest of the 
gospel dispensation; that in him all the typ- 
ical priesthoods of former dispensations were 
fulfilled and abolished; that he was called to 
this office by the appointment and oath of 
God; that he was in reality what Melchisedec 
was figuratively, the Priest of God, and the 
King of righteousness, and the King or Prince 
of peace; that as Priest he offered himself in 
sacrifice unto God for the sins of mankind; 
that this offering was made once for all 
through the Eternal Spirit; that it was a 



Atonement. %3 

sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction 
for the sins of the whole world; that the of- 
fering once made need not and can not be 
repeated; that w^hen he passed into the heav- 
ens through his own blood, the priestly office 
passed with him; that since his ascension 
there is no priest or priestly office on the 
earth; and, finally, that all pretended priest- 
hoods and all pretended offerings of Christ 
in any sacrament or ceremony in the Church 
on earth, are vain deceits and delusive super- 
stitions. 

The mystery in the sacrificial death of the 
Son of God, is in the fact that he himself 
was active as the priest in making this offer- 
ing — ^that he laid down his life voluntarily, 
and was not merely passive as a victim of 
martyrdom. This is undoubtedly true, and 
to the careful student it presents no serious 
difficulty. He had sought to prepare his dis- 
ciples for t!he event, and for the interpretation 
of it, by predicting it, and by assuring them 
that his enemies could have no power over his 



24 Atonement. 

life except by special permission. "No man 
taketh my life from me. I have power to lay 
it down, and I have power to ^take it again. 
This commandment have I received from my 
Father.^^ This early assertion of having full 
power over his own life, and the clear inti- 
mation that he might find occasion to give it 
up, and then to resume it, has its highest and 
only explanation in his priestly office, and 
proves that while his enemies were active in 
his condemnation and crucifixion, he was pas- 
sive as to their designs, and yet active in the 
priestly function of offering himself through 
the Eternal Spirit unto God. As the Father 
spared not his only begotten Son, but deliv- 
ered him up freely for us all, so the Son 
spared not himself, but gave 'himself unre- 
sistingly into the hands of the smiters, and 
was led as a lamb to the slaughter. In this 
act of self-sacrifice, the consummation of all 
the prophecies, types, and promises of the 
Scriptures, and of the predictions of Jesus 
himself, he made reconciliation — or atone- 



Atonement. 25 

ment — ^for the sins of the people. His blood 
was shed for the remission of sins, according 
to his own words at the institution of the 
supper, which was the ordained memorial of 
his death. He died hy the cruelty of his ene- 
mies; yet was his blood the blood of sacri- 
fice, the price paid for human redemption. 

It is important that, in all this study, we 
keep the two facts in mind, that the death 
of Jesus Christ was his own priestly act, the 
offering of Tiimself, and that it was the price 
paid by which we were bought off or re- 
deemed from the penalty of sin. This is not 
theory nor conjecture, but Diyinely-at tested 
fact — the most wonderful fact in the history 
of God's dealings with men. . ^^We are not 
redeemed with corruptible things, as silver 
and gold, but with the precious blood of 
Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish and 
without spot.'' His blood was his life, and 
his life was given for men. Then if, indeed, 
his blood was the ransom, the price paid for 
our purchase, the procuring cause of our sal- 



26 Atonement. 

vation, there is found in his death every ele- 
ment of an atonement — the sacrifice, the obla- 
tion, the satisfaction for sin, with the result 
of a possible reciprocal reconciliation between 
God, whose law was broken, and man, the 
offender and alien. In the absence of the 
necessity for this reconciliation through this 
Divinely-appointed sacrifice there is no ex- 
planation of the fact that Jesus Ohrist was 
the Priest of God, as there is no real mean- 
ing in any other priestly office apart from 
its relation to this one. 



n. 



Since the atonement^ as we conceive of it, 
was the price paid for human redemption, 
or what, in Old Testament language, would 
be the covering of sin, or its expiation, it is 
difficult to single it out, or to separate it in 
our thoughts for contemplation as a distinct 
and complete something, having a nature and 
mode and manifestation of its own. In fact, 
it does not stand alone. It is rather a link 
in a chain^ the part of a whole, having con- 
stant relations with antecedents and results. 
The occasion and necessity for it, as well as 
its purpose and effects, direct and indirect, 
must come into the account before we can 
exercise an intelligent belief with regard to 
it. The word ^^redemption" is more compre- 
hensive and easier of apprehension than the 
27 



38 Atonement. 

word ^^atonement/^ and, therefore, of more 
frequent occurrence in the New Testament; 
and the proper interpretation of redemption 
brings out about all that is meant or ex- 
pressed by the word ^"^atonement/^ 

The word ^^atonemenf^ can scarcely be 
called a New Testament word at all. It oc- 
curs but once in the entire Book, and that 
where it is not a happy translation of the 
original, which would be better rendered 
^^reconciliation.^^ It occurs in Eomans v, 11, 
"By whom we have now received the atone- 
ment.^^ There is no good sense in which the 
believer receives that which is properly the 
atonement; but he does receive the result of 
it — ^the reconciliation — the word which more 
fitly represents the term employed by the apos- 
tle, as well as the experience which he de- 
scribes. Through faith in Christ we do re- 
ceive the reconciliation. No loss would be 
sustained and no error committed if this pas- 
sage should be rendered, as in the margin 
and in the Revised Version, "By whom we 



Atonement. 29 

have now received the reconciliation/^ thus 
eliminating the word ^^atonement" from the 
New Testament entirely. It is an Old Testa- 
ment word^ used in connection with the pre- 
sentation of sin offerings in the ceremonial 
services, which were undoubtedly typical rep- 
resentations of the work which Christ did 
when he offered himself in sacrifice for sin. If 
its meaning, as used in the Old Testament, 
be carried over to Christ, and applied to his 
work, as has been done, there is no impro- 
priety in its use, and no erroneous doctrine 
is inculcated thereby. In fact, this practice 
has become so common that it is next to im- 
possible to discontinue it, if its discontinu- 
ance were desirable; but it is also true that 
the whole of the New Testament doctrine of 
redemption and salvation could be expressed 
without the word atonement, so that its dis- 
continuance in theology would not be as se- 
rious a loss as the first suggestion of it would 
seem to indicate. The essential fact would 
remain, and its Interpretation would be pos- 



30 Atonement. 

sible, if we should employ only the words 
of the New Testament. It is not the word 
that we contend for, but the work of the Lord 
in redeeming the race by the shedding of 
his blood. But we can not dispense with 
the word ^^redemption.^^ "Christ hath re- 
deemed us from the curse of the law, being 
made a curse for us.^^ "In whom we have 
redemption through his blood, the forgive- 
ness of sins, according to the riches of his 
grace.^^ "Ye are not your own; ye are bought 
with a price.^^ 

Theories of the atonement are numerous, 
but we hear little of theories of redemption. 
This is a plain transaction. A slave is in 
bondage. A price is paid to procure his 
freedom. That is redemption. A soldier is 
captured and made a prisoner. A price is 
paid for his freedom. That price is his ran- 
som; and the whole transaction is redemption. 
The price is the satisfaction to him who holds 
the slave or the prisoner; and the discharge 
is the result of the satisfaction. If we speak 



Atonement. 31 

of the price as the atonement, or of the act 
of paying the price as making atonement, 
we do not go astray; and when we call the 
atonement the satisfaction rendered to Di- 
vine justice, or to the law of God, which is 
the same thing, and the discharge of the 
sinner from legal bondage as the result, we 
speak correctly and within the limits which 
the facts warrant. 

The history of theories of atonement is a 
wonderful record, not without interest; but 
since theories are not to figure largely in 
this study, the history of them will have 
little place. We are more concerned about 
the facts which we can grasp and understand. 
It is a fact that Jesus Christ suffered death 
on the cross for the sins of men. This fully- 
attested fact is not affected, as a fact, by any 
explanation we attempt of its contents, or 
of its necessity and purpose. He was him- 
self without sin, yet he suffered for sin and 
for sinners. There was, therefore, somewhat 
in his relation to God and to man and to the 



32 Atonement. 

law of God that made it possible and right 
for him^ as an innocent and 'holy Person, 
to suffer all that he actually did suffer in 
his humiliation and death; and so far as we 
can see, the principle is the same, whether 
he suffered as a martyr or as an example of 
self-sacrifice, or as a substitute to redeem 
those for whom he suffered. N"o conjecture 
of ours as to the purpose of his death, or as 
to the expediency or inexpediency or the just- 
ice or injustice of requiring or permitting 
him, as an innocent mian, to suffer for the 
guilty, can alter the established fact tfeat 
he suffered, ^^the just for the unjust, that 
he might bring us to God.^^ Whether we 
believe in or reject the doctrine of vicarious 
suffering, we are alike under obligation to 
accept the fact, and to harmonize it as best 
we can with iftie essential principles of justice 
and right. In this regard nothing is gained 
by forsaking the evangelical faith. He either 
died for sinners, or he did not. If he did, 
there was no wrong in it; but if he did not, 



Atonement. 33 

our preaching is vain, and our faith is vain — 
both ours and theirs who hold any other 
theory of atonement than the vicarious. We 
must either accept or reject the fact; and if 
we accept it, as recorded in the Gospels, we 
are hound to hold it as compatible with jus- 
tice, holiness, and love under the government 
of God, whether we can see the harmony or 
not. Even if clouds and darkness be round 
about him, "righteousness and judgment are 
the habitation of his throne.'^ 

Although we can not presume to fathom 
the depths of the Divine nature, we dare 
not attribute injustice to the Almighty. 
While his perfections transcend all our 
thoughts, righteousness and holiness charac- 
terize every act of his, however deeply its 
motive may be hidden from us. If anything 
really done by him will not harmonize with 
our conception of his nature, then not his 
nature, but our conception of it, is at fault. 
Hence, if it seem wrong to us, or inconsist- 
ent with the goodness and love of God, that 
8 



34 Atonement. 

he should in any way lay our iniquities upon 
his only begotten Son^ the conclusion is not 
that no such act of his took place, but that 
our perception of the nature of the act was 
imperfect, and lihat our reasoning as to what 
is or is not compatible with the justice and 
love of God is inaccurate. When we make 
the nature of God the ground of our reason- 
ing, as we often do, we reason, not from what 
we know to what we do not know, but nec- 
essarily from what we do not fully understand 
to conclusions which seem inevitable, but 
which, after all, may not accord with the 
deeper nature of things, which lies beyond 
our compre^hension. We can only reason 
from God^s nature to the extent that it is 
revealed to our understanding, and from that 
revelation to conclusions which accord with our 
knowledge of God and of the event embraced 
in the conclusion. This necessary limitation 
does not require or even permit the rejection 
of the vicarious suffering of Christ on the 
ground of its own incompatibility with the 



Atonement. 35 

nature of God; for we know too little of the 
nature of God and of the motives and rea- 
sons for the suffering of Christ to be quali- 
fied to pronounce positive judgment on this 
point from the impressions we receive in 
our imperfect state of knowledge. There 
are infinite possibilities in the Divine perfec- 
tions which we can not know, as there are 
heights and depths in the love of God which 
archangels can only adore, but never be able 
to understand. 

We come back io the astounding fact that 
Christ died for sinners. What is the expla- 
nation? Was there just occasion for this 
extraordinary evfent? Was there necessity 
for it? Was there an exigency in the gov- 
ernment of God and in the condition of the 
human race that demanded so great a sacri- 
fice? Could or would the Almighty enter 
upon such a scheme of redemption in the 
absence of the highest conceivable reason 
and necessity for it? These questions arise 
unbidden, and drive us to the nearest pos- 



36 Atonement. 

sible approach to a glance at the situation 
when redemption was determined. Of 
course, the desired point of view is not fully 
accessible. We can not place ourselves by 
the side of the Almighty before the founda- 
tion of the world was laid, and look at the 
conditions and possibilities and the alterna- 
tives, as they appeared to the Divine thought. 
But we must imagine that there were con- 
tingencies, emergencies, and alternatives 
present in his mind. The world of possi- 
bilities was not less than the world of actu- 
ality. As he surveyed the scene, the rebel- 
lion of man, which was then a contingency, 
was foreseen with its dire results, and the 
provisional redemption ordained. This in- 
cluded the gift and sacrifice of the Son of 
God, the arrest and suspension of the pen- 
alty of sin after it was incurred, the restora- 
tion or renewal of a probation for man, the 
permission to multiply under the covenant 
of grace, with the final manifestation of the 
whole scheme under the gospel economy. 



Atonement. 37 

It was a wonderful scheme, with many es- 
sential parts, each adjusted to its place, and 
all linked together with mutual helpfulness 
and dependence. The alternative, so far as 
we can see it, was the execution of the pen- 
alty of transgression, with iftie resultant fail- 
ure of the development of creation in the 
actual existence of the posterity of the first 
sinners, they perishing without offspring. 
This alternative was not permitted, God pur- 
posing redemption through the incarnation 
of his Son, who came forth from the bosom 
of the Father in t)he fullness of time, to 
bear the burden laid upon him, and to ac- 
complish the work of redemption in fact. 
God sent his Son into the world that the 
world through him might be saved. This 
is the theme of our study. "Herein is love, 
not that we loved God, but that he loved 
us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation 
for our sins.^^ 

Is this true in fact? Did Je^us Christ be- 
come the "propitiation for our sins?^' What 



38 Atonement. 

is ^^propitiation ?^^ ^'^If any man sin, we have 
an Advocate with the Father, and he is the 
propitiation for our sins, and also for the 
sins of the whole world/' Yes, Jesus Christ 
is the ^^propitiation'' for our sins, and we 
must find out what propitiation means. Just 
now we only insist that it has a meaning. 
No one will question that. It is a word of 
great force. It comes to us in New Testa- 
ment usage, without special definition, and 
must bear the meaning usually given it; but 
it is so associated with Jesus Christ and his 
priestly work that its meaning must be found 
in what he did and suffered in making him- 
self an offering for sin. The apostle tells 
us that Jesus Christ ^Vas set forth to be 
a propitiation through faith in his blood,'^ 
so that the ^^propitiation" is closely related 
to the blood of Christ or to his sacrificial 
death. Propitiation and atonement are 
nearly related. If not identical, they are in- 
separable. Where one is found, the other 
is also. If Christ, by his death, became the 



Atonemeistt. 39 

propitiation for our sins, it was because or 
in the fact that his death atoned for our 
sins. Propitiation belongs to the priestly 
service, as does the atonement, and relates 
to the covering of guilt, not by denial and 
concealment, but by confession and expia- 
tion. 

It will be observed that we are not yet 
discussing any theory of atonement. Our 
present aim is to identify the fact, to gain 
knowledge of the act of Christ in which 
the atonement is found. Then theories and 
explanations, with difficulties and objections, 
will come later. The all-comprehensive fact 
is the death which Jesus died. If there was 
any atonement in his mission and work on 
earth, it was in his death. His spotless life 
of active obedience was necessary to the com- 
pleteness of his personal character, necessary 
to the work of his ministry among men, and 
necessary as a preparation for his sacrifice; 
but it was not the ransom, not any part of 
the price paid for our redemption. His 



40 Atonement. 

teaching was all-important. How the world 
would be impoverished without it! But his 
teaching formed no part of his sacrifice. Ee- 
demption was not in his teaching. His mir- 
acles had their place, their witnessing and 
evidential value, and will have till the end 
of time; but these were not the ransom. His 
priestly office was not called into activity in 
any of these, nor in any event in his life, 
till the period of preparation for his death. 
Nothing that he did prior to the agony of 
Gethsemane can be counted as priestly serv- 
ice. All was preparatory to the final event, 
when he assumed the priestly function, made 
his isoul an offering for sin, passed through 
the veil, entered into the Holy of Holies, 
and with his own blood consecrated the new 
and living way to heaven, whither he has 
gone as our forerunner, and where he ever 
liveth to make intercession for us. 

Let emphasis be given the statement that 
the atonement was in the death of Christ. 
There is meaning in it. There is a disposi- 



Atonement. 41 

tion of late among those who deny the sacri- 
ficial and substitutionary oflB.ce of the death 
of Christ, and of course deny its atoning eflB.- 
cacy, to enlarge the use of the word "atone- 
ment^^ so as to take into it all our Savior^a 
active life of teaching, his prayers, his self- 
denials, and his miracles, and also to extend 
it to include his resurrection from the dead, 
making all constituent parts of the atone- 
ment. To make it mean so much that it 
means nothing is an adroit way of destroy- 
ing it. This modem method of treating the 
subject has some superficial attractiveness in 
it, as it gives opportunity for the fluent use 
of Scriptural phrases, with the seeming in- 
tent to magnify rather than belittle the 
atonement, while in fact it displaces it in 
its true character, and substitutes for it that 
which is not atonement, being no part of the 
ransom price, and not having the least ele- 
ment of propitiation for sin. This strange 
habit of making the whole of the life and 
death and resurrection of Christ atoning is 



42 Atonement. 

carried ^o far by some writers as to include 
in the atonement all the Divine activity in 
working salvation in men through the power 
of the Holy Spirit. Of course^ this is a vio- 
lent abuse of language. It distorts the mean- 
ing of the word, both by depriving it of its 
proper import, and by imposing upon it a 
sense and use it was never intended to bear. 
The practice is scarcely less than a decep- 
tion of the innocent, an imposition most 
reprehensible; and yet it is possible that 
some who have fallen into it have first de- 
ceived themselves into the belief that they 
have found a legitimate interpretation of 
the Word and work of God. By using the 
words ^^redemption^^ and ^^atonement^^ inter- 
changeably, as may be done in many in- 
stances, and then overlooking all distinction 
between redemption by price or in the sense 
of purcliase and the actual redemption in 
the sense of deliverancQ, — provisional redemp- 
tion and applied redemption — one might fall 
into the habit of speaking of redemption in 



Atonement. 43 

the sense of reformation or spiritual regen- 
eration, which would not be a serious depar- 
ture from propriety; but to go so far as to 
use the word ^'^atonemenf ^ in this way is in- 
excusable. Eedemption by price was redemp- 
tion by atonement, as the price was the 
^^precious blood of Christ/^ the shedding of 
which was the one atoning act; but redemp- 
tion by power or by the making over of the 
provisional redemption to the person receiv- 
ing it is the continuous work carried on in 
the world by the agency of the Holy Spirit. 
This continuous work is not atoning, but 
resultant from the atonement which was com- 
pleted when Christ died. 

This latest and somewhat specious use of 
the word "atonement'^ is sometimes sought 
to be justified by a seemingly innocent sort 
of play on the English word, but which is 
utterly without force or authority, besides 
being preposterous, when the facts are all 
considered. It consists in separating the 
syllables of the word, making it "at-one-ment,'^ 



44 Atonement. 

which is an arbitrary thing, the accident of 
orthography, and a departure from the proper 
use of the verb to atone, whence the noun 
is derived. It is intended to compel the word 
to yield the sense of reconciliation, or the 
act of becoming one, which is indeed the ef- 
fect of the atonement, but not the atonement 
itself, which is causative. This English word 
is the equivalent of a Hebrew word, which 
admits of no such manipulation. It is sheer 
folly to play with the translation as if that 
could affect the meaning of the original. 
Both the English word and the original bear 
the sense of appease or satisfy for an offense. 
The Old Testament use of the word passes 
readily into the gospel terminology, and justi- 
fies the sense we attach to it. It primarily 
conveyed the idea of a covering or the hid- 
ing of the sin for which atonement was made. 
When forgiven, the sin was put away, cov- 
ered up, hidden. The atonement did it. The 
lid of the ark of the covenant covered the 
tables of the law, and became the mercy- 



Atonement. 45 

seat, where the visible token of the Divine 
Presence appeared. That was the place where 
God and man met together, where pardon was 
bestowed, and the offender accepted. In the 
tabernacle and in the temple the blood of 
the atoning sacrifice sprinkled the mercy- 
seat and ceremonially covered the guilt of 
the transgressor, shadowing forth the real 
sacrifice, which was to be the covering of the 
sins of men — the ^^propitiation,'^ the atone- 
ment found in the blood of Jesus, the Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sin of the world. 



III. 

The doctrine of atonement, as held by the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, is set forth in 
very general terms in the Articles of Re- 
ligion and in the Ritual for the administra- 
tion of the Lord^s Supper. The word ^^atone- 
ment^^ does not appear in these Articles, nor 
in the Ritual, as it does not in the New 
Testament; but, nevertheless, the substance 
of it is so declared that we can not easily 
mistake the meaning of the Church, and need 
not be in doubt or darkness with regard to 
it. While not one of the Twenty-five Articles 
is given directly to this subject, the lan- 
guage found in the Second Article and in the 
Twentieth Article, without using the word 
^^atonement,^^ declares the belief of the 
Church with sufficient distinctness and full- 
ness. 

46 



Atonement. 47 

The Second Article^ after stating that the 
Son was of one substance with the Father, 
and took npon him man's nature in the womb 
of the Virgin, afBrms that Christ "truly suf- 
fered, was crucified, dead, and buried, to 
reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacri- 
fice, not only for original guilt, but also for 
the actual sins of men/' The Twentieth Ar- 
ticle gives us these words: "The offering of 
Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, 
propitiation, and satisfaction for the sins of 
the whole world; and there is no other satis- 
faction for sin but that alone/' In the serv- 
ice consecrating the elements for the Lord's 
Supper, the elder prays: "Almighty God, our 
Heavenly Father, who of thy tender mercy 
didst give thine only Son, Jesus Christ, to 
suffer death upon the cross for our redemp- 
tion; who made there, by his oblation of 
himself once offered, a full, perfect^ and suf- 
ficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for 
the sins of the whole world, and did insti- 
tute," etc. 



48 ' Atonement. 

It should be borne in mind that the Ar- 
ticles of Eeligion and the Ritual were framed 
with particular reference to the differences 
between the Roman Catholics and the 
Churches of the Reformation, and that much 
of the peculiar wording was determined by 
the controversies then existing. Of course, 
under the circumstances, some shadings of 
thought are given which were applicable to 
conditions then present, and which are some- 
what obscure at the present time; but, never- 
theless, the general teaching is for all times 
and all conditions. The Methodist doctrine 
of atonement is contained in these authori- 
tative utterances; and Methodist ministers 
and people are properly held to the mainte- 
nance of the faith thus set forth and to its 
natural and rightful interpretation. 

The absence of the word "atonement from 
the Articles and the Ritual is not to be con- 
strued as authorizing the indulgence of every 
one's own conjectures or vagaries; for the 
terms employed convey the true idea of atone- 



Atonement. 49 

ment, and indicate the interpretation the 
Church requires and the doctrine intended 
to be expressed when the word is used. Even 
if the language be somewhat antiquated, the 
substance of doctrine is easily understood, 
is readily traceable to the primitive Church 
and to apostolic times, and flows directly 
from the Sacred Oracles. The modern style 
of the opposition is to excite prejudice 
against it by speaking of it as of mediaeval 
origin, as coming from ^^schoolmen,^^ as be- 
ing ^^Latin theology,^^ and the like, turning 
it over to the class of obsolete speculations 
against which it is, and ever has been, a liv- 
ing protest. The better way is to trace it 
to its real origin, find out its real intent and 
meaning, and compare it as it is with the 
Holy Scriptures. 

The peculiar phraseology of the Second 
Article requires attention at this point. All 
who deny vicarious atonement vigorously as- 
sail the language of this Article as contain- 
ing erroneous doctrine and flatly contradict- 

4: 



50 Atonement. 

ing the language of the Scriptures. There 
is just enough of the appearance of fact in 
this last statement to attract the attention 
of the superficial, and to awaken the suspi- 
cion that the whole adverse allegation may 
he well founded. The statement that Jesus 
Christ was crucified ^^to reconcile his Fa- 
ther to us'^ is held up as contrary to the teach- 
ing of the apostles, that Christ died to recon- 
cile men to God, and not God to men — that 
^^God was in Christ reconciling the world to 
himself.'^ This seeming variation of thought 
is entitled to candid consideration. 

It should be noted, in the first place, that 
if the language of the Article objected to 
contains error, as is alleged, the erroneous 
statement has reference to reconciliation, and 
affects our view of that doctrine, and not nec- 
essarily the doctrine of the atonement. It 
is easy to conceive that the same atonement 
might be necessary to reconcile men to God 
as to reconcile God to men. This we assume 
to be true, in fact. Then, if the statement 



Atonemei^t. 51 

had been reversed, or should be now reversed, 
and the allegation put forth that Christ died 
^'^to reconcile men to his Father/^ the doc- 
trine of the atonement would not be modi- 
fied in the slightest degree. The atonement 
was in the sacrificial death, not in its pur- 
pose, or design, or results. The practice of 
confounding an act with its design and re- 
sult is by no means uncommon, especially 
with hasty thinkers; but it is never condu- 
cive to clearness of vision or expression. 
Whatever view we take of reconciliation, the 
atonement must be regarded as its antecedent, 
and as, in an important sense, causative of 
that result. 

In the next place, in order to obtain a right 
view of reconciliation and fairly to interpret 
the language of the Article in question, we 
must go back to the antecedent relation of 
the parties, and consider the attitude of each 
to the other, and also the necessary steps 
which each must take in order to overcome 
the alienation and effect the desired harmony. 



52 Atonement. 

Sin separated between man and his Maker. 
In any possible human conception of the situ- 
ation, man was the oflEender, and God was 
the oflPended party. Was there not reciproc- 
ity or mutuality in the alienation? The dis- 
harmony was great, and, in the nature of 
things, the opposition must have been re- 
ciprocal. Man turned away from God and 
against God; and God could not remain in 
harmony with man while man was in rebel- 
lion. The gulf between them was deep and 
wide. God^s nature could no more 'harmon- 
ize with man in sin than holiness could fel- 
lowship with unholiness. Here, then, is the 
situation: God's nature antagonizes man's 
nature, God's holiness antagonizes mean's un- 
holiness; yet reconciliation is sought. Man, 
the offender, is helpless. For him to bridge 
the chasm is impossible. He can not repair 
the breach; he can not undo the wrong; he 
can not atone or satisfy for the offense com- 
mitted, if so inclined; and we can not see 
that he has any inclination to do so, or any 



Atonement. 53 

desire to that end. God must move, if any 
movement be made towards reconciliation^ 
and he must provide the means and prescribe 
the terms if restored harmony shall ever be- 
come possible. God is sovereign, and he is 
also a righteous ruler. His authority has 
been set at naught, and his law broken, so 
that, in restoring rebels, he must relinquish 
his claim and lower the standard of right- 
eousness in government, or demand satisfac- 
tion. Every perfection of his being impels 
to the latter. An atonement is necessary; 
but man can not make it. If made, God 
himself must make it — ^make it to himself 
and to the just requirements of righteous 
moral government, yet so that it shall be for 
man, and be accounted as if by man. Here 
is the whole problem of redemption. At the 
foundation of it lies the necessity and prin- 
ciple of vicariousness or substitution. In 
the language of men — ^the only language 
available — man was alienated and in rebel- 
lion, and God was offended, grieved, angry, 



54 Atonement. 

and, by the holiness of his nature, opposed 
to sin in every degree and form. The dif- 
ference was reciprocal, and the reconciliation 
must be reciprocal. But God was gracious, 
and mercifully inclined to reconciliation 
prior to any step being taken in that direc- 
tion. His love of pity yearned for the resto- 
ration of the alienated, and moved the plan 
that would satisfy the demands of justice and 
holiness. Of his predisposition to reconcilia- 
tion there can be no question. No sacrifice 
was necessary to induce that. His willing- 
ness to have the restoration effected was not 
secured by the atonement, but that it was 
whidh secured the atonement. 

Then, assuming that the Father was ante- 
cedently inclined to the reconciliation, that 
his compassion yearned over the alienated, 
and sought the restoration, in what sense 
can it be said that he was reconciled through 
the sacrifice of Christ? It mu^t be exactly 
in the sense in which he was angry, grieved, 
offended. If his righteous indignation 



Atonement. 56 

against sin was an element in his government, 
and if unbending justice demanded satisfac- 
tion in order to the outflow of his compas- 
sion, then the legal obstructions to forgive- 
ness on repentance must be removed; and 
the removal of them is the turning away of 
his wrath, well and forcefully expressed as 
the reconciliation of the Father. It became 
possible thereby for the Father^s love to 
reach the objects of his compassion, right- 
eously to offer them pardon and reconcili- 
ation, his justice, love, and holiness Mending 
in the rescue of the perishing. It was a gov- 
ernmental as well as a personal transaction, 
in which God's opposition to sin might be 
turned aside from the penitent, and pardon 
flow freely in answer to trusting faith. In 
this sense — and only in this sense — was the 
Father reconciled. It is first a provisional 
reconciliation, as redemption is first a pro- 
visional redemption; and then it becomes 
actual in personal experience to all who re- 
ceive the reconciliation. If there is any force 



56 Atonement. 

or truth in tlie assertion that ^^G-od is angry 
with the wicked/^ and if there is any truth 
or meaning in the declaration that his ^'anger 
is turned away/^ then is it also true that 
through the death of his Son the Father is 
reconciled to men. In other words^ in that 
sense precisely in which the alienation was 
reciprocal, the reconciliation is reciprocal, as 
of necessity it must he. Then, through the 
merits of Ohrisfs death and the personal 
faith of the penitent, the reciprocal recon- 
ciliation becoming a fact, the restored alien 
can isay with the prophet, "0 Lord, I will 
praise thee. Though thou wast angry with 
me, thine anger is turned away, and thou 
comfortedst me.'^ Then can he also sing, — 

*' My God is reconciled, 

His pard'ning voice I hear; 
He owns me for his child ; 
I can no longer fear." 

Thus it appears that this doctrine of mu- 
tual reconciliation is not the dreadful thing 



Atonement. 57 

it is sometimes represented, is not tainted 
with heresy, does not spring from that mys- 
terious mine of mystery and error, ^^the Latin 
theology/^ and bears no opposition to €iny 
Scripture that assures us that Christ died 
to reconcile men to Grod. "For if, Vhen we 
were enemies, we were reconciled to God by 
the death of his Son, much more, being rec- 
onciled, we shall be saved by his life/^ We 
gladly respond to this truth; and yet the 
challenged sentence in our Second Article 
presents a phase of the doctrine of reconcili- 
ation which is true in itself, which harmon- 
izes with the scope and tenor of the Scrip- 
tures, and is of vital interest to all who 
would intelligently ponder the deep things 
of God. 

Eeturning to the Disciplinary language 
cited as containing the doctrine of atonement, 
it should be noted that there is no attempt 
to show how the death of Christ availed to 
effect the redemption and reconciliation of 
men. The fact is affirmed with all clearness; 



58 AtoiisiEment. 

but all that relates to the how and the where- 
fore is left where every question concerning 
the mode of the Diyine existence and pro- 
cedure must be left, with the unsearchable 
mysteries not yet to be explored. It should 
therefore surprise no one that our Church 
develops no theory of atonement intended 
to unfold all the mysteries 'of redemption. 
Hard questions are sometimes asked which 
we can not answer satisfactorily; but they 
relate mostly to the method and reasons for 
God^s action, and have no place in the proper 
interpretation of his Word or providence. 
If we fail to account for some things which 
revelation asserts, and which we believe on 
the testimony given, we -are not in condem- 
nation for inconsistency, nor are we alone in 
the failure. The so-called Liberalists — Uni- 
tarians, Universalists, and what not, who deny 
vicarious atonement — ^fail utterly to explain 
or account for the terms employed in the 
sacred writings expressive of atonement and 
redemption, or even to give any rational in- 



Atonement. 59 

terpretation of the purpose or motive of the 
incarnation of the Son of God at all. They 
can not possibly assign him a mission worthy 
of his name. So long as they believe that 
God could forgive sins on the simple ground 
of repentance^ without atonement, they are 
estopped from connecting Christ^s coming 
and death with pardon; and, while holding 
that the natural relation of God to men, as 
Creator and Father, secured to all men the 
benefit of eternal salvation, beyond the pos- 
sibility of forfeiture, they are cut off from 
attributing the blessedness of salvation here 
or in heaven to the advent of Christ into this 
w^orld. Indeed, upon the ground which they 
assume, there is no possibility of accounting 
for the tremendous fact of the suffering and 
death of Jesus Christ, or to show any sense 
in which, by his death, he became the Sa- 
vior of men. AH their ready utterances to 
the effect that he was a Divine Teacher, that 
he made salvation known, that he taught the 
way of life, that he revealed the Father, that 



60 Atonement. 

he set a perfect example^ and exemplified the 
truth, and died in confirmation of it, are in 
the line of right; but they fall infinitely short 
of the deeper and broader truth, that he also 
became ^^the Author of eternal salvation to 
all them that obey him/^ 

The burden of the allegations of the 
Church is that the death of Jesus Christ was 
a sacrifice, a propitiation, and a satisfaction 
for the sins of the world. As we have seen, 
all that procured the redemption and the 
reconciliation was in his death. There was 
no other meritorious cause. His active work, 
his miracles, his teaching, his exaimple, had 
each its place in his mission; and his resur- 
rection from the dead, the crowning glory 
of his visible career, had its special office; 
but only his death was the price of redemp- 
tion. ^^He was delivered for our offenses, 
and raised again for our justification.^^ "He 
bare our sins in his own body on the tree.^^ 

There ought to be no difficulty at all in 
accepting the fact that Jesus Christ was the 



Atonement. 61 

^^'propitiation for our sins/^ This is too 
clearly stated in the Scriptures to be called 
in question. In our thought it means to 
purchase or procure favor from one who was 
displeased, or had grounds of displeasure to- 
wards us. We never use it to express the 
favor of one who has never been offended; 
and so it bears very nearly the meaning of 
expiation or atonement. Christ by his death 
propitiated God, in that God was justly of- 
fended by our sins, and by propitiation pro- 
cured the outflow of Divine compassion, 
which was obstructed by human guilt. It 
did not change the nature or the mind of 
God, nor originate in him the disposition to 
be gracious to men; but it provided for the 
removal of all hindrances, so that God could, 
without detriment to his holiness or justice, 
or any loosening of righteous administra- 
tion, extend the offer of salvation to sinners, 
which his original love prompted, on terms 
made possible to them. As before explained, 
it averted what the Scriptures call ^'the wrath 



62 Atonement. 

of God/^ It appeased whatever there is in 
God which the Bible calls ^"^anger/' It pro- 
pitiated him in whatever sense propitiation 
was possible or necessary^ and in no other 
sense. In -all this nothing is attributed to 
God that does not belong to him — nothing 
of human passion, or weakness, or change- 
ableness. There is something in God which 
opposes sin and is excited to activity by sin. 
The Scriptures call it "wrath.^^ We do well 
to follow the Scriptures. Whatever it is, it 
is inseparable from holiness, and makes pro- 
pitiation pOiSsible and necessary. While the 
propitiation does not change God^s nature, 
nor create in 'him any disposition or affection 
he did not possess before, it must be con- 
ceded that it changes the Divine attitude 
towards all who would avail themselves of 
it. It means this, or it means nothing. This 
much is taught alike in the Scriptures and 
in our standards of doctrine; and with this 
truth so clearly revealed, every disciple of 
Christ may confidently face the fault-findings 



Atonement. 63 

of this critical age, the boasts of liberalistic 
pretentiousness, and the sneers of open or 
covert infidelity, knowing that his interpre- 
tations of God^s Word harmonize with the 
consensus of the best thought of the best 
thinkers the Church has ever produced. 

In the language of the Twentieth Article 
of Eeligion, above quoted, the word ^'^satis- 
faction^' occurs, coupled with "propitiation,^^ 
in describing the effect of the one offering 
made by the High Priest of our profession. 
It also occurs in the prayer of consecration 
in the service of the Lord^s Supper. It must 
be therefore that the Church holds to the 
idea of satisfaction in the atonement. This 
is not a Scriptural word, like propitiation, 
but it is a good word to use in this connec- 
tion, as it expresses very nearly the true 
meaning of atonement. Profound and 
learned discussions have taken place in con- 
sidering the sense in which the death of 
Christ made satisfaction for sin — whether 
God is sensitive or impassable, whether he 



64 Atonement. 

feels pleasure or grief and is personally af- 
fected by the actions of Ms creatures, or 
whether all terms so representing him are 
necessarily figurative, while his whole atti- 
tude towards sin has respect to his relation 
as a moral ruler. The topic is interesting, 
but its discussion is not necessary to the pres- 
ent study; and our limits forbid entrance into 
so wide a field of speculation. It is enough 
for our purpose to assume that satisfaction 
was rendered when all the requirements of 
the situation were met, as they were by the 
great sacrifice, so as to make sure the purpose 
for which he was ordained from the founda- 
tion of the world. If Grod^s holiness and 
justice had claims to be met before the pro- 
visional redemption could be complete and 
be made available, they were met and satis- 
fied. If the law of God had claims, they 
were met and satisfied. If any principle of 
rectoral righteousness had claims growing 
out of man's rebellion, they were met and 
satisfied; and, finally, if aught in the Divine 



Atonement. 65 

nature answering to human sensibility, emo- 
tion, wish, desire, pleasure, or grief had any 
claim needing or demanding satisfaction in 
order to the acceptance and effectiveness of 
the atonement, that element in God, what- 
ever it was, was met and satisfied. While 
Jesus was yet in the conflict beneath the 
clouds of earth, the voice of the Father came 
to him from the opening heavens, ^^This is 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'^ 
Then, in view of the meaning of the word 
and of its near approach to the essential idea 
of an atonement, the expediency of using this 
word ^^satisfaction^' in this connection is ap- 
parent. But when the idea of satisfaction is 
carried to the extent of indicating the inflic- 
tion of the penalty of sin on the substitute, 
insuperable objections arise, which will not 
down at our bidding. The satisfaction which 
the Church affirms is not of that kind. A 
penal atonement is no part of Methodist doc- 
trine. The satisfaction was not the judicial 
infliction of the penalty, but a condition 

5 



66 Atonement. 

brought about by the voluntary offering of 
the Mediator, which love and justice accepted 
in lieu of the execution of the penalty, and 
which availed to the establishment of the 
new probation and the opening of the way 
for the compassion of Ood to reach the ob- 
jects of his pity, without giving license to 
sin, or setting aside any claim of public 
justice, or loosening any bond of reotoral 
righteousness. Used in this sense, the word 
has a rightful place in our interpretation of 
the scheme of redemption, and we do well 
to go on repeating in the service of the holy 
communion, as we have done from the begin- 
ning, that his death is '^a full, perfect, and 
sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction 
for the sins of the whole world/^ Some of 
our most distinguished writers, who are 
worthy of the veneration accorded them, ob- 
ject to the word ^^satisfaction^^ in this con- 
nection, as if it necessarily carried with it 
the objectionable idea of the infliction of 
the penalty on the Divinely-appointed sub- 



Atonement. 67 

stitU'te; but we do not so understand it, and 
do not think the Church intends any such 
moaning to attach to it. Our good Dr. Miley 
was too easily frightened at the use of this 
word, and failed to strengthen his position 
and his generally admirable argument for 
vicarious sacrifice, by swinging so far away 
from the word ^^satisfaction/^ He conceded 
far too much to the defenders of penal atone- 
ment by admitting 'almost all they claim as 
the meaning of ^"^satisfaction.^^ We prefer 
to use the word as the Church uses it, and 
find its use perfectly consistent with our 
conception of an atonement which is not 
penal, but is ample in its provision to meet 
its exact purpose. 



IV. 

Having identified the doctrine of atone- 
ment, as taught by the Chureh, it is impor- 
tant that we briefly consider the necessity 
of such a Divine interposition before advanc- 
ing to the fuller development of the theo- 
logical aspects of the subject, with the inci- 
dental questions to be encountered in the 
progress of our study. 

As it now appears, the culmination of our 
Lord^s mission in this world was the sacrifice 
of himself for the sins of mankind. All be- 
sides this was preparatory, incidental, and 
consequential. With the hour of his death 
in view, he could calmly say, ^^But for this 
cause oame I unto this hour.'' As he came 
on a mission, so he came with a purpose; and 
to the accomplishment of his purpose he 
devoted all the energies of his being. Oc- 
68 



Atonement. 69 

casionally, as the shadow of the coining 
crisis seemed to cross the horizon of his daily- 
life, a tone of sadness appeared in his words, 
as when, foretelling the results of his teach- 
ing, he said, "But I have a baptism to be 
baptized with; and how am I straitened till 
it be accomplished!'^ No other one in heaven 
above or on earth beneath ever entered upon 
a task so great, so important, so full of sacri- 
fice, or so wonderful in contemplated results. 
The occasion for it must have been equal to 
its magnitude, imperative as righteousness, 
and unyielding as the pillars of heaven. In 
the thought of God the necessity of the sac- 
rifice must 'have been as controlling as was 
its value to the moral universe. Whatever 
the inspiration of his mission, or whatever 
its scope or its contents or its cost, nothing 
entered into it that was not necessary to its 
completeness, nothing not required by the 
emergencies to be met. In view of the tre- 
mendous interests involved, we dare not be- 
lieve that any step was taken in purposing. 



70 Atonement. 

planning, or preparing for it, or in executing 
it, that was not sincere, or that had not a 
vital relation to the work to be done. Noth- 
ing entered into it for display or for spec- 
tacular effect — nothing superfluous. The 
character of the parties to it, as well as the 
grandeur and solemnity of the undertaking, 
forbid all thought of mere pretentiousness 
in connection with it. 

With this statement of principles, which 
may be regarded as self-evident, the conclu- 
sion comes naturally, if not indeed unavoid- 
ably, that there was occasion amounting to 
an emergency or moral necessity for the mis- 
sion of the Son of God into this world, and 
for all he did and suffered, in order to main- 
tain the Divine government, and to secure 
moral benefits that were in jeopardy. 

In asserting necessity in this connection, it 
is not to be understood that there was any 
uncontrollable fate, or any impelling power 
over or upon the Deity forcing the mission — 
any attribute of his own, or any force extra- 



Atonement. 71 

neous to himself, constraining him or inter- 
fering with the spontaneity of his gracious 
action — but the necessity has reference to 
the end proposed and the means of securing 
it. If the end was predetermined, the pro- 
vision for it must he made; and the means 
could not be omitted. Then, in view of the 
principles involved, there is neither hazard 
nor presumption in asserting that God him- 
self could not bring about the result without 
the means — could not, because of the moral 
principles imbedded in his nature, which were 
the only restraints possible to him. 

The easy and often unwise habit of re- 
solving everything into the sovereignty of 
God, and ascribing to him the power to 
work his will in all things, often misleads 
to seriously unsafe conclusions. His sover- 
eignity was conspicuously exercised in de- 
termining whether to put the plan of redemp- 
tion into operation or not; but when the 
perfections of his being determined the moral 
elements required, and what provisions it 



72 Atonement. 

Must contain, the Divine sovereignty could 
not depart therefrom, and could not wish or 
will to do otherwise than pursue the plan 
at whatever sacrifice Infinite Wisdom pre- 
scribed. Nothing contrary to the nature of 
God could enter into the plan in the first 
place, and nothing out of harmony with his 
authority and rule as moral Governor of the 
universe could ever he admitted. Arbitrary 
action at variance with the Divinely-estab- 
lished order was impossible; hence, if re- 
demption be effected, it must come about in 
regular process of governmental proceeding. 
It must of necessity be by the readjustment 
of legal relations, through an intervention 
adequate to uphold the authority of the Su- 
preme Euler and the righteousnesis of his law, 
while permitting the intended benefits to 
flow freely to the redeemed. This was the 
problem of redemption, and when its solu- 
tion, as revealed in Christ, is apprehended, 
the nece»sity of the great sacrifice as a part 
of the scheme appears too clearly to be set 



Atonement. 73 

aside by any slight objections raised in our 
short-sighted reasoning. The overpowering 
argument is that the sacriJ&ce was made. If 
redemption could have been effected without 
it^ there is every reason to believe it would 
have been done; for it can not be that the 
demand for the humiliation and death of the 
innocent victim was made needlessly. Its 
only justification is on the ground of neces- 
sity^ in order to the end to be secured. Then^ 
its necessity in order to the end being con- 
ceded, the only question remaining is as to 
whether the end was of sufficient value to 
the moral universe to justify the expense. 
Here again we fall back upon the wisdom of 
God. He who alone could estimate at once 
the value of the sacrifice and of the proposed 
result willingly and freely made the sacrifice. 
In his judgment the end was worthy of the 
expenditure. 

That the death of Christ was necessary in 
order to the restoration of men to possible 
salvation is fundamental in any rational view 



74 Atonement. 

of the atonement; and when this is admitted, 
the implications are very serious and far- 
reaching. It follows that the conjectures of 
men are erroneous in holding that God could 
righteously forgive sin 'on the simple ground 
of repentance^ without any sacrifice or any 
satisfaction to the claims of his law. This 
old Unitarian contention is utterly fallacious. 
It opposes every principle of equity in gov- 
ernment, and reduces the Divine administra- 
tion to the condition of subjection to the 
caprices and emotions of the governed. Be- 
sides this, it involves the serious implication 
that the Divine Son came on a needless er- 
rand, submitted to unnecessary humiliations, 
and offered himself in fruitless sacrifice. For- 
giveness of sins is, in fact, connected with 
his death, which would not be the case if 
pardon were possible, or were granted on the 
sole ground of repentance and reformation, 
^^n whom we have redemption through his 
blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to 
the richer of his grace.^' In addition to this 



Atonement. 75 

is the fact that both the privilege and grace 
of repentance come through Ohrist. After 
his resurrection, it is written of him, "Then 
opened 'he their understanding, that they 
might understand the Scriptures, and said 
unto them. Thus it is written, and thus it 
behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from 
the dead the third day, and that repentance 
and remission of sins should be preached in 
his name among all nations, beginning at 
Jerusalem/^ "It behooved him,^^ was neces- 
sary. He was under bond, not only that the 
Scriptures might be fulfilled, but because of 
covenant obligations assumed in view of the 
antecedent necessity which caused the sacri- 
fice to become the ground work of the whole 
mediatorial scheme. The obligation thus 
lies back of the promises and prophecies of 
the Scriptures, locating the necessity where 
we place it, in the imperative requirements 
of moral government. 

From the fact that the death of Christ was 
necessary it further follows that Grod sustains 



76 Atonement. 

no natural relation to men as Creator that 
assures salvation. In other words, the fact 
of creation does not estaiblish a relation that 
makes men children and heirs. This is not 
the ground of hope. Men are not children 
of God because he created them in any sense 
that brings spiritual advantages or gives title 
to the Divine favor or heirship in the king- 
dom. This false assumption thalt all men are 
by nature the children of God is fraught 
with peril, not only to the essential doctrines 
of Christianity, but to the hopes of vast num- 
bers of people, who cling to it with all confi- 
dence that, in some way, in the outcome of 
life, God must take care of his own. But 
many are God^s creatures who are not his 
children. He owns none whose spiritual life 
is not the product of his own power working 
in them by the agency of his Holy Spirit. 
Not once in all the Scriptures, since Adam 
lost the image of God, and begat a son in his 
own likeness, has the relation of children in 
God^s family been attributed to creation, or 



Atonement. 77 

to the natural birth, but always to redemp- 
tion and adoption; or, which is the same 
thing, to the new birth, or spiritual regener- 
ation. This is a crucial fact in this connec- 
tion, and one of high significance in its bear- 
ing on all the lines of difference between the 
evangelical and the non-evangelical systems. 
It touches the vital point, because it implies 
the power in men to forfeit heirship, and all 
that heirship means. It lassumes that sin af- 
fects the relations of eternity, as well as those 
of time. Men are so cut off from God that 
eternal alienation ensues, unless redemption 
restores the vital union, and establishes the 
relation with God which will secure personal 
acceptance here, and everlasting life here- 
after. In the light of this truth the reason 
for the costly sacrifice appears; nor is there 
any way of justifying it on any hypothesis 
that makes all men the children of God by 
being born after the flesh. As Paul says so 
plainly, ^^They which are children of the 
flesh, these are not the children of God.'' 



78 Atonement. 

The doctrine of the universal Fatherhood 
of God has been so persistently preached of 
late years^ and with such enthusiasim, as to 
impress the busy, rushing masses that re- 
demption was a trivial affair, a sort of make- 
believe intervention, with no serious conse- 
quences following its acceptance or rejection, 
everything belonging to eternal relations and 
destiny having been settled in the fact and 
law of creation. But this gratuitous assump- 
tion with regard to the Divine Fatherhood is 
not a new thing, although its greatest em- 
phasis is of modern date. In our Lord^s 
time some unbelieving Jews set up the same 
claim in 'his presence, and never on any other 
occasion did he exhibit deeper resentment, 
or use greater severity of speech, than when 
denying this claim, and rebuking those who 
made it. They were boasting of racial rights 
as the chosen people. First they said to him, 
^^ Abraham is our f ather.^^ In the thought of 
the Jew this was a high claim, and one which 
was deemed all-sufficient and indisputable. 



Atonement. 79 

But Jesus desired to impress them tliat there 
was a spirtual relation with Abraham which 
was of more importance than the fleshly rela- 
tion. So he answered them^ "If ye were 
Abraham's children, ye would do the works 
of Abraham^' — having the spiritual relation 
in mind as the relation of highest value. 
Then, not grasping his thought, and perhaps 
being piqued tha;t their boast was not con- 
ceded, they advanced the higher claim, and 
said, "We have one Father, even God.'' This 
assumption raised a question of fact. It was 
sharply stated, and must be admitted or de- 
nied. If admitted, it might justify the mod- 
ern assumption of universal Fatherhood, or 
that all are God's children whom he created. 
Or, in other words, if this modern contention 
were sound, and if all are in fact God's 
children, then the claim of these Jews was 
right, and our Lord would have been com- 
pelled to acknowledge it. But he did not. 
On the other hand, he most vehemently de- 
nied it, and gave an answer which ought to 



80 Atonement. 

silence forever all pretenses to being God^s 
children on the ground of creation or natural 
relation. ^^Jesus siaid unto them, If God were 
your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded 
and came forth from God; neither came I of 
myself, hut he sent me. Why do ye not un- 
derstand my speech? even because ye can not 
hear my word. Ye are of your father the 
devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.'^ 
Further along in this same conversation, he 
added to his answer, ^^He that is of God hear- 
eth God^s words: ye therefore hear them not 
because ye are not of God.'^ Surely, then, 
any doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood which 
holds or implies thait men are naturally God^s 
children, or children because of creation, or 
in any way so related to him as to exclude 
the necessity of redemption and adoption, in 
order to heirship in his family and kingdom, 
is not of God, but contrary to the plain testi- 
mony of our Lord himself. "He came unto 
his own, but his own received him not. But 
as many as received him, to them gave he 



Atonement. 81 

power to become the sons of God, even to 
them that believe on his name: which were 
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, 
nor of the will of man, but of God/' Men 
become the sons of God by receiving Christ, 
and being born of God. 

It is a reasonable supposition tha;t if the 
sacrificial death of Christ was a necessity in 
the plan of redemption, he would refer to it 
in that light by word or act at some time in 
his ministry. As the disciples were dull of 
hearing, or slow to understand his allusions 
to his approaching death, it is not strange that 
little was said about it in his earlier and gen- 
eral discourses; but as the hour drew near we 
find recognitions of it, and after his resur- 
rection he mentions it distinctly. In his dis- 
course to the disciples whom 'he accosted on 
their way to Emmaus, he said: ^^0 fools, and 
slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suf- 
fered these things, and to enter into his 
glory?'' The rebuke for slowness to under- 



83 Atonement. 

stand the prophets was sharp, but the lan- 
guage shows that a right interpretation of 
the prophets would prove the necessity of his 
suffering in order to fulfill the Scriptures, 
and a higher necessity for it in the exigency 
of the divine government as the reason why 
the Scriptures through the prophets predicted 
it. Then, further along, after 'he had ^^opened 
their understandings,^^ he declared the neces- 
sity of his suffering, and connected his passion 
with the gospel message of repentance and 
pardon. ^^Thus it behooved Christ to suffer, 
and to rise from the dead the third day; and 
that repentan^ce and remission of sins should 
be preached in his name.^^ As "it behooved 
him to suffer,^^ it was not only becoming and 
expedient, but necessary. He was under obli- 
gation to do it, now that he had assumed the 
office of Messiah. That he should suffer in 
order to make "repentance and remission of 
sins^^ possible was stipulated in the everlast- 
ing covenant. 

Perhaps nowhere in the Scriptures is the 



Atonement. 83 

necessity of Christ's death more clearly or im- 
pressively set forth than in the record of his 
experiences and prayer in the Garden of Geth- 
semane. The preparations for the final hour 
were nearly completed. He had delivered his 
last extended discourse, offered his interces- 
sory prayer, instituted the memorial of his 
death, and retired with his disciples to the 
quiet of the garden, there to encounter the be- 
trayal and the beginning of the tragic end. 
Choosing three of his trusted followers, he 
with them separated from the others, and 
then leaving them alone for a little time, he 
prostrated himself on the ground, in the dark- 
ness of the night, and entered into the deep- 
est agony of his humiliation and sorrow. 
After saying to those nearest him, ^^My sioul 
is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death,'' he 
fell on his face, and prayed, saying, ^^0 my 
Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me; nevertheless not as I will, but as 
thou wilt." After this he prayed the second 
time, saying, ^^0 my Father, if this cup may 



84 Atonement. 

not pa«s from me^ execept I drink it^ thy 
will be done/^ Then he prayed the third 
time, saying the same words. Of course, 
something will depend on the meaning of the 
^^cup^^ which he prayed might pass from him. 
It seems evident, however, that the ^^cup'^ 
signified the culmination of his suffering, the 
last of the agony, not yet experienced — not 
that of the garden which had just caused the 
exclamation, ^^My soul is exceeding sorrowful 
even unto death;'^ nor that which accom- 
panied the prayer, causing his sweat to be- 
come drops of blood falling on the ground; 
but that which still awaited him, the cruci- 
fixion and death. As a man of keen sensi- 
bility, he instinctively shrank from it, with 
the dread which was natural, yet calmly sub- 
mitted unhesitatingly to the will of the 
Father. Who can doubt that he would have 
been spared tha;t "cup" if there had been any 
possibility of securing the object of his mis- 
sion without drinking it? Or who can doubt 
that it would have been "possible" to let that 



Atonement. 85 

cup pass, except for the high moral necessity 
for the sacrifice, which was a« absolute as the 
justice of God? 

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
in commenting on this garden experience, 
uses strong language, and illumines it with 
holy thought, connecting it with the priest- 
hood of the Son of Grod. He no doubt looked 
upon it as the beginning of his priestly func- 
tion, the complete consecration of himself 
to the sacrifice, in which he offered himself, 
through the Eternal Spirit, without spot unto 
God. From the hour of this consecration 
he was on the altar. "Who in the days of his 
flesh, when he had offered up prayers and 
supplications with strong crying and tears 
unto him that was able to save him from 
death, and was heard in that he feared; 
though he were a Son, yet learned he obedi- 
ence by the things which he suffered; and 
being made perfect, he became the author of 
eternal salvation unto all them that obey him; 
called of God a High Priest after the order 



86 Atonement. 

of Melchisedec/^ TMs priestly prayer and 
consecration — ^^this offering up of himself — 
marked the completion of his discipline and 
the perfection of his obedience. 

His prayer was unto the Father Almighty, 
who ^Vas 'able to save him from death^^ — 
showing the meaning of the ^^cup'^ he wished 
might pass. Grod was able to save him; for 
he had power enough, wisdom enough, and 
could command all necessary instrumentali- 
ties. He could send legions of angels. The 
prayer was ^^heard^^ and answered, for it was 
all summed and conditioned on the final pe- 
tition, ^^Thy will be done.^^ The forma;! re- 
quest, ^TiCt this cup pass,^^ was also con- 
ditioned on the ^^possibility,^^ which possibil- 
ity did not exist. A petition based on a non- 
existent condition is not rejected when it is 
not granted, especially when the relief or 
benefit it seeks comes in another way, as it 
did in this instance. It was a cry for relief, 
and the relief came when the ministering 
angel of God strengthened him. Evidently 



Atonement. 87 

one of the puTposes of this whole experience 
was to demonstrate the impossibility of ihis 
exemption from death, because of its absolute 
necessity in order to the end to be achieved — 
the redemption of the race through the 
*^^blood of the Lamb/^ slain, in the purpose 
of God, from the foundation of the world. 

The inquiry comes — ^What of this paradox? 
Why was it not possible for this cup to pass, 
seeing that God was able to save him from 
death? Or, why was it said that God was 
able, if indeed it was not possible that the 
cup should pass? The seeming paradox in 
the record is not difl&cult of solution. God 
was able to do it, and yet it was not possible 
for him to exercise his ability under existing 
conditions. We are able to do many things 
which in fact we can not do. The mother has 
the power and ability to destroy the life of 
the child of her love, yet she can not do it. 
Moral considerations, as well as emotional, 
control the exercise of her ability. In deter- 
mining the question of possibility, all the 



88 Atonement. 

moral considerations involved, as environ- 
ments of the case^ must be taken into the 
account. When the scheme of redemption 
through atonement was determined on, it was 
settled forever that the sacrifice should be 
made. It was so stipulated in the covenant, 
and had been foretold in prophecy, and in 
type; and in the Divine promise, confirmed by 
an oath, it had been pledged. The covenant 
and promise and oath of God must not fail. 
God could not prove false. He could not deny 
himself. Therefore he could not spare his 
only begotten Son. Moral righteousness, as 
changeless as the nature of the Deity, forbade 
the failure of redemption. 

Taken as a whole, the real lesson of Geth- 
semane is, that the sacrifice of Christ, as an 
offering for sin, was indispensable, in the 
sense that the salvation of sinners was impos- 
sible without it. There was both occasion and 
necessity for the atonement, and therefore 
that he should drink the ^^cup^^ to the dregs, 
which he did gladly and willingly. 



The necessity of the atonement — ^or, which 
is the same things the death of Christ in sacri- 
fice for sin — will still further appear in the 
progress of our study of the efforts which 
have been made to explain the relation of 
this great sacrifice to the salvation of sinners; 
or, in other words, in what must be said of 
the expositions or theories of atonement, 
which fill so large a place in theological liter- 
ature. 

Neither the limits nor the purpose of this 
writing will permit large occupancy of this 
field, and happily it is not necessary in order 
to an intelligent grasp of the subject. The 
more prominent theories have become so well 
known that to mention them is enough to 
bring up the leading thought which each was 
intended to emphasize. Without attempting 



90 Atonement. 

a full list of theories, or an analysis of them, 
all the needs of our study will be met by con- 
sidering the salient features of those which 
have had the widest influence in the past, 
and which command the most extended ap- 
proval at the present time. It is needless, as 
it is difiicult to group or classify theories of 
atonement, as any grouping will be imperfect, 
and divisions and subdivisions will abound 
in lany possible classification, as the details 
of each theory shall be taken up for critical 
examination. 

There are theories yet in the Ohurch, which 
may be traced by the curious back to the days 
of Augustine, but with accretions, losses, and 
modifications, as the centuries have swept 
over them. Few, if any, will accept all that 
Augustine taught on the subject. The doc- 
trine of Anselm, or the theory with which his 
name became identified, has been permanently 
influential; 'but scarcely any one will own him- 
self to be a disciple of that astute divine of 
the eleventh century. Calvin and Arminius 



Atonement. 91 

were later known as champions of different 
views of redemption^ each giving his name to 
a system of doctrines^ and each holding some 
vital truths which will live through the ages; 
but neither expounded the atonement so as 
to become a standard for us, or to satisfy the 
thought of the present generation. Modern 
thinking looks beyond these men, beyond the 
^^schoolmen/^ beyond the "Latin Theology/^ 
and beyond the Greek fathers, and seeks to 
draw its inspirations fresh and warm from the 
Sacred Oracles. We care little for the particu- 
lar shadings of thought expressed by any one 
whose name has been prominently connected 
with this subject in the past, except to the 
extent that he has thrown light on the mean- 
ing of the Scriptures, or helped to a knowl- 
edge of the truth as held and taught by the 
apostles of our Lord. We want to push be- 
yond all theorizing, if possible, and get at the 
underlying principle, the heart and soul of 
the doctrine itself, and to estimate it in the 
best light that comes to us from any quarter 



92 Atonement. 

or any period. We are not to reject a doctrine 
because it is old, nor to receive a theory be- 
cause it is new. Our question is not whether 
a doctrine is old or new, but whether it is 
consistent with right conceptions of Divine 
government, and with positive revelations of 
the holy Scriptures. 

Theology has become — nay, has been for 
long — a very technical science. Of necessity, 
it has acquired a terminology of its own, and 
it would be unwise to ignore this fact, or to 
treat lightly the words it has brought into 
prominence. Such words as ^^^vicarious,^^ 
^'substitutional,^^ "governmental,^^ "satisfac- 
tion,^^ "equivalent,^^ "commercial,'^ and espe- 
cially the phrase, "moral influence,^' have been 
so used as to have become indispensable in 
studying the doctrine of atonement, and we 
must accept them and treat them fairly. It 
can not be said that each is the name of a 
distinct theory, although each has been so 
used, and has some appropriateness as descrip- 
tive of the particular feature of the doctrine 



Atonement. 93 

intended to be given prominence. But this 
list of words can not be used as a classifica- 
tion of theories^ for the reason that several 
of them have place together, and belong in 
the same theory. We can not speak of a ^^sub- 
stitutional theory^^ very well, because any 
theory containing the idea of a substitution 
in the atonement comes under the head of 
"vicarious/' or "vicarious atonement'' carries 
the full idea of substitution, and includes all 
"substitutional" theories. The same must be 
said of the word governmental. That also is 
a substitutional theory, and vicarious as well. 
So the technical use of the words "satisfac- 
tion'' and "equivalent" belong to this same 
class. They all relate to the vicarious suffer- 
ings of Christ. The word "commerciaf is 
applied to certain views of vicarious suffering 
which are not much avowed, but which are 
supposed to follow other views that are 
avowed, the word "commercial" expressing 
results repugnant to the Scriptures and to 
reason. Thus it is seen that the word "vicari- 



94 Atonement. 

ous^^ is a very general term, sufficiently so to 
include nearly all theories that do not come 
under the head of "moral influence/^ which 
is also a rather vague expression to denote 
theories which are not theories, of an atone- 
ment which is not an atonement. An atone- 
ment which is real is made hy the vicarious 
sufferings of Christ, while nearly or quite all 
that is supposed to be designated by the 
words "moral influence/' is of negative char- 
acter, consisting of denials of What the friends 
of a real atonement assert. Of course, the 
advocates of the moral influence idea recog- 
nize the fact that Jesus suffered and died, and 
that his death is a large factor in the Chris- 
tian system; but^ denying that it was judi- 
cially substituted for the penalty of sin, they 
claim that it benefits men by its exemplifica- 
tion of the self-sacrificing spirit, by its con- 
firmation of the teachings of the great Master 
in Israel, and by its powerful appeal to the 
sympathetic and emotional elements in human 
nature, while it is the ground or source of 



Atonement. 95 

pardon only as it is the means of inducing 
repentance and confession. 

The doctrine of atonement^ as held by the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, as has been al- 
ready seen, is sufficiently generous and broad 
to include whatever is properly contained in 
the words "vicarious/^ "substitutional/^ "^^gov- 
ernmental/^ and "satisfaction^^ — not all that 
is sometimes attributed to these words, but all 
that rightfully belongs to them as technical 
terms descriptive of atonement. Besides this, 
our doctrine has a place and use for all the 
"moral influence'^ that can possibly go out 
from the suffering Christ, so that we join 
heartily in the warmest commendations of his 
self-sacrificing spirit, and of his noble exam- 
ple of loyalty to the truth, even to martyr- 
dom and death. We glory in the cross, in 
every aspect of it, as the symbol of patience, 
meekness, fidelity, goodness, and beneficence, 
as well as the symbol of the sacrifice which 
redeemed us from the penalty of sin. 

It is rather more accurate to use the word 



96 Atonement. 

"vicarious'^ with reference to the suffering of 
Christy than with reference to the atonement, 
as it was by his vicarions suffering the atone- 
ment was made, while the atonement itself, 
as a result of the suffering, can not be said to 
have been vicarious in any appreciable sense; 
yet, in view of common usage, and of the im- 
probability of any serious misleading, the 
common expression, ^^vicarious atonement,^^ 
need not be regarded as objectionable. The 
suffering which became the atonement and 
effected redemption, is looked upon as vicari- 
ous, and therefore as substitutional, because 
he who suffered, suffered not for himself or 
on his own account, but for the race of man- 
kind, whose nature he assumed, and whose 
sins he bore. In some way, possibly beyond 
all human comprehension, he stood for the 
race, embodied in himself the whole of hu- 
manity, or so represented it that the nature 
he offered in sacrifice was as nearly the nature 
that sinned as it is possible for us to con- 
ceive — for was he not in fact that ^^second 



Atonement. 97 

Adam?'^ As the whole of human nature was 
in Adam, and the entire race was potentially 
in his loins when he sinned, and received the 
effect of sin — not the guilt or penalty — so the 
Lord from heaven, the second Adam, repre- 
sented humanity as a solidarity, and poten- 
tially the individuals of the race, and in this 
representative capacity laid down his life, and 
thus "tasted death for every man/^ The 
racial identification of Christ with us was 
most complete, carrying a deeper meaning 
than we catch from the surface of the words. 
A recent writer not inaptly asserts that we 
were ideally with him in all that he did; 
were with him in his crucifixion, in his death, 
in his resurrection, and in his glorification. 
He was literally put to death, and all whom he 
represented died with him, were buried with 
him, and arose with him, not physically, but 
constructively. This ideal and constructive 
crucifixion, death, and burial with him has 
in it much for us that is real; for it is to be 
realized spiritually in our death unto sin, 
7 



98 Atonement. 

and our living again unto righteousness^ when 
we ^*^put off the old man^ and put on the new 
man, which after God is created in righteous- 
ness and true holiness/^ Then shall we be 
able to say with Paul, "I am crucified with 
Christ; nevertheless I live, yet not I, but 
Christ liveth in me/^ When all that he did 
for us, in his race identification with us, is 
made over to us by faith in him, then, and 
not till then, shall we be ^^complete in him/' 
Thus was our Lord in the fullest sense our 
Representative, our Daysman, our Mediator. 
He put himself in our stead, made his soul an 
offering for our sin, died bearing our iniqui- 
ties, and redeemed us from the curse of the 
law, being made a curse for us. We all like 
sheep had gone astray, every one to his own 
way; but the Lord made to meet upon him 
the iniquity of us all. The chastisement of 
our peace was upon him, and with his stripes 
are we healed. As he had no sin of his own, 
and yet suffered for sin, he suffered for others, 
in the place of others, and for their benefit — 



Atonement. 99 

that is, vicariously. All this affirm the Scrip- 
tures. The testimony is in the prophecies, 
in the types, in the promises, in narrative, 
and in epistle; and so we believe, and, believ- 
ing, we seek to interpret the fact — ^the most 
wonderful fact in the 'history of the moral 
universe — without any distortion, and with- 
out omitting any element in it that astounds 
us by surpassing the narrow limits of our un- 
derstanding. It is to be accepted as a con- 
crete fact, a fact of history, developed and 
enacted in the world of human life and obser- 
vation, and yet belonging in its ultimate rela- 
tions and significance to the realm of the in- 
visible and eternal. 

Accepting the general statement that the 
sufferings of Christ in atoning for human 
guilt were vicarious and substitutionary^ we 
come to the question around which have been 
fought the hottest battles of the ages of the- 
ological warfare, and which are yet without 
decisive result. The question is still pend- 
ing. In what way, and to what extent, were 

LcfC. 



100 . Atonement. 

the sufferings of Christ a substitute for the 
suffering of the guilty? So far as this ques- 
tion relates to mode, or to the how of the 
transaction, it must remain undetermined. 
But there are points raised 'by it which we 
ought to answer, at least proximately, or so 
as to satisfy the demands of our faith. Many 
answers have been given, and these have given 
rise to theories or conjectures which must not 
be ignored, although they can not be pur- 
sued exhaustively, nor so far as many will 
deem desirable. A sentence or two must 
suffice where pages would not be out of place. 
Possibly the oldest answer, and the one 
most prominent in thought when the ques- 
tion is up, is that w^hich represents the suffer- 
ing which Christ endured as corresponding 
exactly with what the sinner would have suf- 
fered if left unredeemed and required to bear 
in his own person the penalty of the law. 
The literal transfer of the penalty from the 
sinner to his substitute is taken to be the 
meaning conveyed by the word vicarious, and 



Atonement. 101 

also by the word substitution, w'hen these are 
employed in explaining the atonement. It 
is perhaps not going too far to assert that this 
meaning is always in mind when objection is 
made to the doctrine. Unbelievers and *^lib- 
eralists/^ so-called, are apt to attribute this 
meaning to all evangelical teachers of vicari- 
ous sufferings. If their contention were cor- 
rect, and if the words would admit of no other 
construction, it would be necessary to aban- 
don the use of these terms, and to seek other 
words to be made the vehicle of thoughts 
which we know to differ widely from the sense 
sought to be put upon them by the opposers 
of our faith. Methodists do not believe that 
the penalty of sin was transferred to the 
Savior; nor do they believe, when they un- 
derstand their own doctrine, that the penalty 
was inflicted on him, or that his suffering was 
penal in any sense. It was a substitute for 
the penalty. It is not to be denied, however, 
that some Churches accounted orthodox, and 
individual writers among ourselves, have at 



102 Atonement. 

times given reason to opposers so to inter- 
pret the words in common nse. Augustinian 
predestinarians and high Calvinists do so con- 
tinually, and with intent, while others fol- 
low them inatdvertently, causing the whole 
doctrine of substitution to suffer ridicule. 
We sorrowfully admit this, and deplore the 
fact and the result; yet we insist that intelli- 
gent writers and preachers are inexcusable 
for confounding Arminian and Wesleyan 
teaching with these old Calvinian doctrines, 
and for persisting in objections which apply 
only to these antiquated distortions, and can 
not lie against the substitutionary doctrine 
as held by a large majority of the evangelical 
Churches of our day. 

If Methodism be not tolerant, she denies 
her origin and the spirit and genius of her 
institutions. In her leniency she sometimes 
bears with imperfect and even erroneous rep- 
resentations of her faith, and has failed to 
formulate a theory which covers the exact 
point now before us; but the trend of her 



Atonement. 103 

teaching is unmistakable, and the point at 
which she diverges from the arbitrary and 
mechanical substitution of Calvinism is not 
hard to find. In holding to a suspension of 
the penalty of sin in order to the develop- 
ment of creation and the propagation of the 
race under a remedial scheme founded in 
redemption, with probational advantages gra- 
ciously furnished through the mediation of 
Christ, we repudiate as vigorously as do oth- 
ers the transfer to Christ of the penalty of 
our guilt, and declare it impossible as well 
as unreasonable that the Holy One of God 
should be punished for whait transgressors 
did. He suffered, but he was not punished; 
he intervened, not to bear the penalty, but to 
arrest and suspend it, in order to give us a 
new probation. The difference here is broad 
and vital. Some have taught that the death 
of Christ was an offering made to the devil, 
to induce him to release his claim on human- 
ity — as if his usurpation could constitute a 
claim! — a thought than which nothing could 



104 Atonement. 

be more abhorrent to Christian sentiment; 
and yet to attribute this to all who believe 
that Christ suffered vicariously would scarcely 
exceed in unfairness the prevalent habit of 
attributing to them the belief that his death 
was a judicial infliction of the penalty of sin. 
This notion of the transfer of the penalty 
had a place and significance in the old pre- 
destinarian doctrine of what is called a com- 
mercial atonement, as part of a covenant made 
between the Father and the Son before the 
foundation of the world, in which the Father 
gave the Son a certain and definite number 
of souls in consideration of his sacrifice — a 
trade of so many souls for so much suffering. 
For this definite number he is supposed to 
have suffered the penalty of the law, releas- 
ing them forever from all liability to suffer 
it over again for themselves, thus making 
their salvation, as God^s elect, absolutely in- 
fallible. One can scarcely think of anything 
more repugnant to the Scriptures, and to all 
evangelical thinking, than this; and yet this 



Atonement. 105 

almost unthinkable weight of absurdity is 
sought to be loaded on the evangelical doc- 
trine of vicarious suffering, and would be, if 
we would consent to step aside and permit 
our liberalistic friends to define for us the 
doctrines we hold. Of course, we disclaim 
sympathy with such a perversion. 

The idea comes in here that, while the 
death of Christ was not the penalty of the 
law in kind or degree, it was, nevertheless, 
an equivalent as well as a substitute for the 
penalty. This is widely held, and is not a 
stranger in Methodist pulpits. Of course, it 
is not 60 objectionable as is the transfer the- 
ory; but there is reason for hesitation and 
for guarding it with limitations and defini- 
tions before giving it favor. The fact is, 
we have no scales for weighing equivalents. 
It is impossible for us to estimate the pen- 
alty of sin, and surely it is not less difficult 
to form a judgment of what would be an 
equivalent for it. Fortunately this duty is 
not devolved on us. None but God could 



106 Atonement. 

estimate moral values in this connection. 
Surely, in fixing the value of the offering 
made in our behalf, account would he taken 
of the dignity of the person of the Son of 
God, of the purity of his life, of his dis- 
interestedness, and of the voluntary charac- 
ter of his interposition; and who shall say 
that the sacrifice was not equal in moral 
value to the penalty which it was intended 
to displace? We can not say yes or no on 
the abstract point. It is not for us to know 
the worth of the penalty or of the substitute, 
nor is it well to think of the atonement as 
a balancing of moral values. There was a 
gracious element in it which we must not 
eliminate or cover into obscurity. Just how 
much Christ suffered, and what was the value 
of his death, and in what way his merit availed 
for our redemption, we can not know, and 
need not know. The how of his achievement 
is outside the range of legitimate inquiry. 
Nor can we tell whether it required a greater 
sacrifice to redeem the race of mankind than 



Atonement. 107 

to redeem a man — whether he felt the weight 
of the sins of the numberless millions more 
than the weight of one sin. He died for 
principle. Neither quantity nor numbers 
can have much place in moral estimates. If 
his death was a full equivalent for the de- 
served penalty for the whole race, one is in- 
duced to ask wherein is the grace of forgive- 
ness after the full equivalent has been paid? 
The question is natural, and yet it is not 
conclusive. If the offenders themselves had 
paid the price and set up the demand for 
release on the score that the claim against 
them had been discharged, there would be 
the appearance of justice in it; but this claim 
will not bear the test of merit when the of- 
fended party gratuitously furnished the 
equivalent which met the obligation. The 
most that could be held in this event would 
be that, while the discharge from penalty 
was a gratuity, it was nevertheless a right 
secured, and as really belonged to the bene- 
ficiary as if he himself had bought it. There 



108 Atonement. 

is force in this^ and little chance to establish 
the justice of any further liability to the 
penalty after the obligation to it has been 
discharged by an equivalent, no matter 
whence the equivalent came. Without dis- 
paraging the value of the substituted suf- 
fering of 'Christ, we still hesitate to admit 
this idea of an equivalent. It might justify 
the sentiment of the song, ^'^ Jesus paid it 
all;^^ but that does not bring it into har- 
mony with our best conceptions of a provis- 
ional redemption, with the graciousness of 
the pardon offered and conditioned on the 
acceptance of Christ, with full liability to 
the penalty in the absence of this accept- 
ance. The design or intention of the sacri- 
fice is an element vital in this case, and it 
was certainly not designed to destroy or set 
aside the penalty, or to cancel all obligation 
to it; for that has not been done. But it was 
designed to arrest the penalty and to place 
humanity on salvable ground, with a proba- 
tion of personal responsibility and all needed 



Atonement. 109 

helps to overcome weakness, and to meet all 
gospel demands of obedience and loyalty to 
Christ. 

Within the memory of people yet living, 
the great question to be met in studying 
the doctrine of the atonement had reference 
to its extent. In books on divinity large 
space was given to this phase of the subject, 
much larger than to the nature and design 
of it. Calvinistic authors contended for a 
limited atonement, holding that Christ died 
only for the elect, yet affirming that there 
was sufficient value and merit in the blood 
shed to have redeemed the whole race, if 
such had been the Divine intention. Others, 
not Calvinists, and Methodists in particular, 
asserted broadly the universality of redemp- 
tion, and emphasized the high value of the 
sacrifice, showing it to have been equal to 
any and all demands of righteous govern- 
ment and a worthy ransom for the entire race. 
Of course, stress was laid on the fact that 
Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted 



110 Atonement. 

death for every man. Of late little is said 
of the extent of the atonement. Indeed, 
in modern conception, extent is scarcely at- 
tributahle to it, but only to the applicability 
of its benefits, all which is covered by its 
design. But it was in this controversy that 
thinkers fell into the habit of exalting the 
value of the sacrifice into an equivalent for 
the penalty. 

Then, turning aside from the question of 
equivalents, which leads from revelation into 
pathless fields of conjecture, it is necessary 
to study still further the sense in which our 
Lord^s sufferings were substitutionary when 
he bore our sins and redeemed us with his 
blood. Of course, we do not escape specu- 
lative inquiry in pursuing this point, but we 
may keep in sight of substantial fact and 
reason. 

He acted as our Eepresentative, in our 
stead, when, as High Priest, he offered him- 
self in sacrifice; and as he did not suffer 
the penalty, which was not executed, he suf- 



Atonement, 111 

fered somewhat and in some way so as to 
meet the necessity of the relation he assumed, 
and to arrest the enforcement of the law. As 
already remarked, just what amount he suf- 
fered, and how his death availed for us, is 
beyond our knowledge. Here the Church 
makes no deliverance. Our best writers have 
not been as clear on this point as on some 
other phases of the great subject. Eichard 
Watson was forceful and conclusive on the 
Divine government, showing necessity for 
atonement, and on the extent of the possible 
application of its benefits, but was less defi- 
nite on the nature of the transaction, al- 
though he dissented from the Calvinistic idea 
of penal sufferings. Dr. Miley was rather 
fearful of the idea of ^'^satisfaction^' as a pos- 
sible helper to the notion of a penal atone- 
ment, but took solid ground on the point of 
substituted suffering, which was not penal. 
His position in this respect is fully indorsed 
by Bishop Foster, and is probably as accu- 
rate a representation of Methodist thinking 



112 Atonement, 

as Methodist literature affords. He touches 
the heart of the matter when he tells us that 
Christ's suffering wa^ not the penalty of sin, 
but a substitute for the penalty. We can 
consistently stand upon this expression. It 
carries the substitutional idea legitimately 
and to the right extent. But it must be un- 
derstood that the substitute did not aibsolutely 
cancel the penalty. It only suspended it till 
after probation^ while its final execution is 
to be averted by personal acceptance of Christ 
and loyal obedience to him. The atonement 
thus gives room for the mediatorial scheme 
and all remedial agencies. It is the ground 
of our living as well as of our hope. Accept- 
ing this statement that what Christ suffered 
was a substitute for the penalty^ it follows 
that the substituted suffering differed from 
the penal^ and we hold that the difference 
was in kind and degree. First, in kind. Je- 
sus Christ could not iSuffer the penalty in 
kind for the reason that 'he could not become 
unholy, or experience the consciousness of 



Atonement'. 113 

sin. The penalty included the sense of guilt, 
with conscious condemnation and remorse, 
and all that makes up spiritual death. But 
he who bore our sins never died spiritually; 
for that implies the loss of holiness. What- 
ever his grief or pain, it was in consonance 
with purity. The sense of innocence could 
not have left him for a moment. The high 
motive of his sacrifice was the support of 
his courage in the darkest hour of his agony. 
Even when the presence of the Father seemed 
to recede, extorting the anguis'hed cry, "My 
God, my God! Why hast thou forsalcen me?" 
there was no condemnation. The sense of 
guilt was forever foreign to 'him. 

Second, in degree. This must include in- 
tensity and quantity. Here we are at sea. 
We can not fathom the depth of his woe. 
He possessed all our sensibilities, so that pain 
was as real to him as it is to us. Nor did the 
nobleness of his character diminish his sus- 
ceptibility to suffering. It rather quickened 
it, giving edge to every pang that rent his 
8 



114 Atonement. 

soul. ISTo human being was ever more fully 
alive to the dreadfulness of humiliation, or 
felt more keenly the bitterness of grief. But 
if he suffered more intense anguish than any 
man ever suffered, it is still not possible for 
us to conceive of his sense of pain being 
equal to what it would have been with the 
sense of guilt superadded; and, besides this, 
the element of duration must be eliminated, 
as it can not be with those who bear the 
penalty of their own sins. But comparisons 
are difficult where the quantities are un- 
known. As in person he was sui generis^ 
so in suffering he was unique. He suffered 
for us — ^^suffered as only he could suffer — 
enough, in the Divine estimate, to be a suf- 
ficient declaration of righteousness to war- 
rant the suspension of the penalty, and se- 
cure life to the race under the gracious pro- 
visions of redemption, without destroying 
liability to future punishment for continuing 
in sin. 

At the point in the ante-mundane ages. 



Atonement. 115 

when redemption was determined, the Son 
of God was ordained to meet the foreseen 
crisis in the world of humanity, when the 
abuse of moral freedom should result in trans- 
gression, so that the first sinners of the race, 
instead of meeting at once the penalty of dis- 
obedience, as under the rigid legal economy 
they must have done, they might find justice 
hand in hand with mercy. As has been well 
said, redemption was not an afterthought de- 
vised and brought in upon man's apostasy — 
the result of a surprise — ^but a provision in 
hand, ready to go into effect immediately on 
the occurrence of the occasion for it. In the 
mind of God the sacrifice was foreordained, 
and the result assured, so that when the fore- 
seen possibility became an actuality, the re- 
demptive scheme met the emergency without 
delay, the first sinners passing from the cove- 
nant of works to the covenant of grace, and 
at once beginning life in the new probation. 
Then, in the fullness of time, he who was 
by Divine appointment both Priest and 



116 Atonement. 

Sacrifice^ came forth in the plenitude of 
grace, to lay down his life for the sins of the 
world. As before appointed, he stepped into 
the breach with just the kind and degree of 
suffering necessary to declare the righteous- 
ness of God, uphold his authority, satisfy the 
demands of public justice, and start the race 
under the new terms of life suited to the 
condition of those who are weakened and de- 
generate through sin. 



VI. 

As ALREADY remarked, the Methodist 
Episcopal Church holds tenaciously to the 
doctrine of the vicarious sufferings of Jesus 
Christ, believing and teaching that his death 
was a ^^fuU, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, 
oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the 
whole world/^ 

The purpose of this redemption, however, 
was not to cancel the claims of the law, or 
to make personal salvation inevitable, but to 
suspend the rigid operation of the legal econ- 
omj^, so far forth as was necessary to permit 
the development of the race in the personal 
existence of the posterity of Adam, with a 
probation suited to the condition of descend- 
ants of progenitors corrupted by sin, and in- 
heriting natures inclining them to evil. The 
design of the atonement was to do this, and 
117 



118 Atonement. 

to afford to all men the possibility of salva- 
tion through the acceptance of the grace of- 
fered them. 

While regarding this doctrine as funda- 
mental, the Church does not put forth a 
formulated explanation of that which is ac- 
knowledged to be a mystery beyond human 
comprehension, as to its method. The fact, 
with its necessary contents, stands forth 
clearly written in the pages of the Gospel, 
its motive being God^s love for humanity; 
but beyond the interpretable record lie un- 
approachable mysteries, with unknowable re- 
lations and results, filling with wonder the 
spiritual intelligences in the heavens, till 
eternity shall reveal the deeper meaning. 
Here we know in part, for we now see through 
a glass, darkly; but, standing in the presence 
of the unrevealed, we reverently adore the 
wisdom of the Infinite Father for what he 
has given and for what he still withholds, 
rejoicing especially in the manifestation of 
Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior, 



Atonement. 119 

Among theologians of our Church, who 
speculate, as do others, and reason from what 
is revealed to w*hat is not, the conjectural ex- 
planation of the atonement, known as the 
governmental theory, finds large favor. It 
is substitutionary inasmuch as it sets forth 
the death of Christ as a substitute for the 
penalty of sin; and since it holds that the 
sacrifice was pre-eminently an administrative 
act, maintaining the integrity of the Divine 
government while extending leniency to sin- 
ners, the designation of it as a governmental 
theory is not inappropriate. When it is dis- 
tinctly identified as a theory, or as the best 
attainable explanation of the purpose and 
design of the great sacrifice, it is perfectly 
consistent for Methodists to accept it as 
fairly representing their belief as to vicarious 
atonement. 

In proper Methodist thought, the remedial 
scheme is a unit. It is one scheme. Of its 
several parts, each one is necessary, and all 
are adjusted to work together, so that the 



120 Atonement. 

absence or failure of one would be ruinous 
to all, so far as the work or purpose of the 
scheme is concerned. The suspension of the 
retribution, the renewal of probation, the in- 
carnation, death, resurrection, and ascension 
of Christ, his official work as High Priest 
and Intercessor — ^all these belong to the sys- 
tem, and, in the mind of God, were complete 
before the foundation of the world. Sin was 
not a part of the scheme, but the occasion 
for it; and the judgment to come is to make 
final exhibition of the reserved right of eter- 
nal justice, and to vindicate the Almighty 
in the establishment, progress, and outcome 
of the plan of rescue devised as a remedy for 
an existing evil — sl plan conceived in the 
wisdom and love of God, on foresight of 
man^s disobedience. 

This view leaves no spot for the feet of 
those to stand upon who represent us as 
holding that Christ died to induce the 
Father to become willing to permit the sal- 
vation of n^en. Of course, there was never 



Atonement. 121 

the shadow of a conflict between the Father 
and the Son, but perfect concord in all the 
counsel of the Godhead. "God so loved the 
world that he gave his only begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth on him might not 
perish, but have everlasting life.^^ Moved 
by the impulse of his own love of pity, God 
saw the crisis, knew the necessities of right- 
eous government, and, as Euler, without the 
least bending of rectoral justice, lifted all bar- 
riers to the outflow of his compassion. He 
did it at a cost which is the marvel of the 
universe, but which displayed the infinitude 
of his love as was not possible in any other 
way. 

As the sacrifice was so necessary in this 
plan, the shafts of unbelief are all turned 
against it with all the bitterness of enmity 
against God. Skeptics of all grades — Uni- 
tarians, TJniversalists, liberalists, and nothing- 
arians — unite in solid column to deride the 
truth and destroy it, offering nothing bet- 
ter in its stead than the barren skeleton of 



123 Atonement. 

an ethical hypothesis. It is wonderful how 
ail the representatiyes of the contradictory 
elements in this heterogeneous mass of oppo- 
sition unite with singular oneness of motive, 
and become amazingly jealous for the honor 
of Divine justice, which to them seems en- 
dangered by the permission of an innocent 
person to indulge the iself-sacrifice to which 
his love impels him. All with one accord de- 
nounce vicarious suffering, as attributed to 
the Son of God in the doctrine of atonement, 
as a cruel wrong, which violates every sense 
of justice, and contrary to the Scriptural 
principle which declares that ^^the soul that 
sinneth shall die.^^ Of course, any objection 
to a doctrine based in Divine justice ought 
to have the fairest consideration; and this 
one must have. 

It must be observed that wherever this ob- 
jection is urged, it is applied to a view of 
the doctrine of atonement which we do not 
accept. It first represents the vicarious suf- 
fering as a case of vicarious punishment, or 



Atonement. 123 

as the infliction of the penalty of sin on a 
person who was not guilty, while the actual 
sinner goes free. A judicial proceeding of 
this kind would be at variance with every one's 
sense of ethical justice, and would find no 
tolerance in human courts. It ought to be 
a sufiicient answer that the objection to- 
tally misapprehends the case, and loses its 
force by missing the mark; but unfortunately 
the friends of the Calvinistic notion of a 
penal atonement too often give ground to 
the objector by representing Christ as being 
judicially punished, or as receiving the pen- 
alty of our sins. Often very serious conse- 
quences follow inaccuracies of statement, and 
seemingly slight theological differences involve 
principles as momentous as eternity. This 
is an instance of the kind. The difference 
between a penal and a non-penal atonement 
is very wide. All the real force of this ob- 
jection vanishes when it is shown that there 
was nothing penal, nothing of the nature of 
punishment, in what the Savior endured for 



134 Atonement. 



u. 



us, nothing involving ^^condemnation'^ or 
wrath/^ and nothing which he did not freely 
accept. It was on his part the highest mani- 
festation of the self-sacrificing spirit, a spirit 
commended by the enemies as well as by 
the friends of vicarious atonement. 

Another aspect of the case is also impor- 
tant. It is that our respeetiye interpretations 
do not affect the historic fact that Jesus died 
for sinners. In some way he suffered and 
died, and the record says it was "the just for 
the unjust/^ and whether, as a substitute or 
as an example, the fact remains^ — ^and all must 
agree that the fact was in the plan of God, 
in full accord with justice and holiness, and 
in perfect keeping with goodness and love. . 
If not so, it was not of God. Then we reach 
the conclusion, and challenge question, that 
there was no more injustice in permitting 
him to suffer as a substitute than in permit- 
ting him to suffer as an example or as a 
martyr — especially in the sense in which we 
use the word "substituted^ in this connection. 



Atonement. 125 

The assumed wrong was not in the design 
or intent of the suffering, but in the fact of 
suffering — not in the quality of his sacrifice, 
but in the fact that an innocent person suf- 
fered that which he did not deserve. 

In a state of perfect retribution, where 
law reigns without grace, no such thing could 
happen as that one man should suffer for 
another's sins. But in this life of discipline, 
such experiences are of daily occurrence. 
Parents rear a son with careful training, and 
fondly hope for comfort in his future. The 
son breaks over the restraints and examples 
of home, forgets parental love, and indulges 
evil passion, to his own ruin and disgrace; 
but he suffers not alone. The parents suffer 
the pangs of disappointment and grief, which 
exceed the suffering of the wayward son. In 
other instances, the father becomes the im- 
bruted victim of appetite or passion, reduces 
his children to poverty, commits crime, and 
entails lasting shame and sorrow upon those 
innocent of any share in his wickedness. 



126 Atonement. 

Inequalities of this kind;, which abound in this 
world, are a powerful argument for a life to 
come. Only the readjustments of eternity 
can right the wrongs of this state of trial 
and discipline. These compensations await 
sufferers here. So also the sufferings which 
Christ endured for men, on his part foreseen, 
accepted and willingly borne, should not be 
considered alone, but always in connection 
with "the glory that should f ollow.^^ "Who 
for the joy that was set before him endured 
the cross, despising the shame, and is set 
down at the right hand of the throne of 
God.^^ It does seem possible, without vio- 
lence to justice, for one of faith and loyalty 
to God to suffer in this world what would 
be painful injustice in a permanent state of 
being — a distinct proof of the probationary 
character of the present life. This appears 
to be an essential fact in all probational ex- 
istence. One man^s sins fall with crushing 
weight on other men's hearts and lives. Good 
and evil mingle freely, the righteous and the 



Atonemeistt. 127 

wicked sharing in the common lot, with 
scarcely the shadow of adjustment to moral 
deserts, while not till the future are we to 
expect men to receive according to their 
works. Here the altruistic life commands the 
approval of the wisest and best, and the self- 
sacrificing spirit receives the highest praise. 
Why, then, should it be thought incredible 
that Jesus, the Son of God, should willingly 
accept a situation involving great sacrifice 
for the goad of mankind, and which in the 
outcome would reveal the Father^s heart, lift 
the world to a higher plane, and throw wide 
open the door of hope to the perishing? Why 
should there not be in the plan of redemption 
and in the life and work of the Eedeemer 
the most conspicuous example of self-abne- 
gation the world has ever known? 

Just here is to be anticipated the appear- 
ance of the advocate of the moral influence 
theory. This is in no proper sense a theory 
of atonement, but a theory of God working 
for men, to attract them to himself, by means 



128 Atonement. 

of his love to them, seeking to impress their 
moral sensibilities, to arouse their gratitude, 
and to induce repentance and reformation 
by such exhibitions of Divine sympathy as 
ought to melt their hearts. This doetrine of 
moral influence from God displaces the true 
idea of atonement, whether we consider it 
in the light presented by Soeinus, Abelard, 
Maurice, or Bushnell. It not only rejects 
penal satisfaction, but all kinds of satisfac- 
tion to law and justice, as of any value in the 
Divine estimation or in judicial administra- 
tion, leaving no room for expiation or pro- 
pitiation, except in a figurative or rhetorical 
way, as these terms seem to attribute to God 
passions and emotions he does not really pos- 
sess. Yet we hail the coming of the man 
with the moral influence plea. There is 
doubtless something in it, and we have room 
and need for all the good it contains in the 
view of the atonement which we here main- 
tain. He says: "Yes, the death of Christ 
on the cross was a wonderful example of un- 



Atonement. 129 

selfish love, an exhibition of unparalleled self- 
sacrifice, a display of unselfish devotion to 
duty, and so conspicuous an illustration of 
fidelity, that the study of it ought to inspire 
in every heart the noble ambition to emulate 
the virtues of a life so true, so beautiful, and 
so devout. It ought to produce deep con- 
viction and powerfully convince the world 
of his own sincerity and of his unswerving 
loyalty to his mission as the Teacher sent 
to reveal God.^^ We accept all this, and all 
other good things that may be said of the 
good influence of his death as a manifesta- 
tion of love to the race and as a declaration 
of a benevolent interest in human welfare; 
but in all we see no redemptive power, unless 
we find in it, in response to the demand 
of administrative righteousness, a propitia- 
tion for sin, a price paid for release from im- 
pending penalty. After recognizing all the 
moral influence that can possibly flow from 
his crucifixion as an example of disinterested 
self-sacrifice for the good of others, we are 
9 



130 Atonement. 

obliged to look beyond the moral effect of 
his example to find the deeper motive of his 
self-abandonment, and to account for its won- 
derful differentiation from the martyrdom of 
all others who ever died in attestation of their 
loyalty to duty and of their faith in him as 
their redeeming Lord. The Apostle Paul, 
for his sake, accepted a life of toil and pri- 
vation, with persecution and imprisonment, 
and finally proved the heroism of his spirit 
in martyrdom; but the influence of his death 
was never held forth as a redeeming power. 
His moral influence as a man was great, while 
his fortitude in suffering and his courage in 
meeting the foes of his faith will ever be 
an inspiration to the Church; but no redeem- 
ing merit was ever ascribed to his death. 
Thousands have died as Paul died — ^and as Je- 
sus died, if his death was simply that of a 
martyr — ^but out of the long line of witnesses, 
never to the death of one has there ever been 
ascribed virtue to heal and cleanse the soul, 
save to that of the Man of Nazareth. Why 



Atonement. 131 

is this? If only moral influence goes out 
from his deaths why does not similar influence 
go out from other deaths? In what respect 
was his death so greatly distinguished from 
the deaths of a hundred others? Why is re- 
demption through his blood? Why is his 
death the only ransom price? Why is he 
alone the propitiation for sin? In what sense 
was his death an offering, a sacrifice for sin? 
In what respect did he officiate as High 
Priest? In what way did the sacrifice of 
himself fulfill the typical offerings of the law 
and abolish forever the ritual services of the 
temple? 

The ritual service of the Jewish temple 
was a device, a Divinely-constructed system 
of machinery, adjusted and adapted in all 
its parts to a specific end. That end was the 
adumbration, the visible shadowing forth of 
the real sacrifice for sin; and if it be a fact, 
as set forth in the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
that Jesus Christ was the Priest, the offering, 
and the Intercessor, the antitype of what was 



132 Atonement. 

typically portrayed, there is no escape from 
the conclusion that his death was the true 
offering for sin, the real expiation, the only 
atonement. Then this is the ultimate and 
spiritual import of the Jewish priestly serv- 
ices, pointing to the Christ as their fulfill- 
ment, and through him to the spiritual sac- 
rifices of the heart, the personal faith and 
consecration of life, without which there is 
no possibility of sharing the provisional bene- 
fits of the atonement. If indeed he was the 
Great High Priest of our profession, then 
he did offer himself in sacrifice to God for 
our redemption; and as the dying Son of 
God he did uphold the integrity of the law 
and government of 'God to the end "that 
God might at once be just and the Justifler 
of him that believeth.'^ 

Protest is made by recent writers against 
what is regularly styled "Latin theology,^^ 
meaning that form of doctrine which makes 
the Divine substitute pay the full penalty of 
sin, entitling the sinner as beneficiary to full 



Atonement. 133 

discharge, as the debtor is entitled to dis- 
charge when his debt is paid. Against this 
cold, dead, mechanical idea of atonement — 
this Shylock demand for the pound of flesh — 
we Join in the protest; and we protest with 
equal vigor against all direct or insidious 
attempts to fix upon Methodism the reproach 
of that mediaeval, commercial, penal atone- 
ment, which has neither place nor welcome 
outside of predestinarian fatalism. We in- 
sist upon the Pauline and Petrine doctrine of 
graciousness in redemption through the pro- 
pitiatory sacrifices, which, instead of paying 
the penalty, suspends it, and restores men to 
a salvable condition, and places before them 
the ofl^er of eternal life through personal con- 
formity to the life and image of the Son of 
God. Salvation from sin is more than a ques- 
tion of debt. It is a question of character. 
Not a single element in the redemptive 
ischeme looks to the supersedure of any obli- 
gation to obey God. The law, as a rule of 
life, is neither repealed nor lowered, but 



134 Atonement. 

grace, vouchsafed through, the atonement, 
furnishes moral leverage to lift the weak and 
degraded to a plane where obedience is easy 
and a delight. The saved man is not only 
relieved from liability to punishment be- 
cause of former sins, but he is renewed in 
spirit, renovated, "born again,'^ and sancti- 
fied through the power of the Spirit of God. 
The atonement provides for all this, and 
makes it possible without in the least degree 
diminishing the necessity of a holy life. His 
sins were indeed a debt he could not pay, 
and their pardon or cancellation through the 
blood of atonement was an unspeakable re- 
lief; but this gracious act, instead of dimin- 
ishing, enhanced his obligation to obedience, 
still leaving final salvation conditioned on 
loyalty to Christ and on the attainment of 
the righteousness of faith, which is the only 
fitness for the fellowship of the saints in light. 
In all this we do not overlook the fact that 
modern scholarship inclines to look favorably 
towards a species of "evolution^^ which is 



Atonement. 135 

compatible with all that revelation teaches 
with reference to the creation of our spe- 
cies. We are not bounds, in this study, to 
pay any attention to that kind of ^^evolution'^ 
which virtually denies the creation of man 
as a distinct act, and finds him a development 
from inferior orders of being by natural ener- 
gies. But if there is an evolution that belongs 
to the law of our being, that is traceable in 
nature and indicated in revelation, it is nec- 
essary to recognize it to the extent of ascer- 
taining whether it conflicts with redemption, 
or requires any modification of our ideas of 
the doctrine of atonement. Plainly no theory 
of ^^evolution^^ that refuses to man a distinct 
creation in the moral image of God, with a 
subsequent lapse into sin, can have place in 
the Christian system, or can have claim to 
attention in the study of Christian doctrines 
founded on revelation. 

But it is contended by many Christian 
scholars that the law of our creation includes 
an element that is properly styled ^^evolu- 



136 Atonement. 

tion/^ which provides for the uprising of hu- 
manity to higher and better conditions 
through an upward struggle of the soul, and 
that the germ or inspiration of this aspira- 
tion and endeavor, being found imbedded in 
the structure of our being, must be attributed 
to the original creation and recognized as one 
of the forces which is to contribute to our 
better destiny. It is held, and properly 
enough, that this inward longing for a higher 
state is shown in the appeal made by the 
tempter, which found ready response in the 
first pair in their first estate, ^^Ye shall be as 
gods, knowing good and evil.^^ Without 
doubt we may assume that the disposition 
to seek for a higher condition was an original 
endowment, given by the Creator for a good 
purpose, and might have found proper exer- 
cise in the primal state of uprightness; but 
that which was good, and intended for good, 
was transformed into evil, as all evil is but 
the perversion of good. When sin occurred, 
and the probation adapted to the first con- 



Atonement. 137 

dition of man was forfeited, the redemption 
ensued in time to arrest judgment and spare 
the offenders, who were passed to the new 
probation by virtue of the atonement pre- 
viously ordained, with natures unchanged, ex- 
cept as to moral condition and inward incli- 
nations. In this lapsed condition, ^^Adam be- 
gat a son in his own likeness,^^ transmitting 
to his posterity the essential attributes and 
qualities of his being, as well as the tenden- 
cies superinduced by sin, all of which became 
elements in the probation instituted under 
redemption. Therefore this feeling of rest- 
lessness under present environments and the 
disposition to rise is indeed an endowment 
of the primal man, inherited under the law 
of our being, and not to be disregarded, as 
the gospel does not repress it but encourages 
and builds upon it. 

Since redemption through the atonement 
thus rescued creation and took humanity as 
it was, with all its natural endowments, and 
placed it upon a new career of development, 



138 Atonement. 

with the gracious helps needed, and which 
come to their best efl&ciency under the Chris- 
tian dispensation, it is safe to assume that 
there is no law of evolution which Christian 
scholarship is obliged to recognize, in which 
there is a recuperating energy out of harmony 
with the spiritual forces provided in the gos- 
pel of Jesus Christ. The essential law of 
creation is in full force under redemption, 
and all its provisions for human betterment 
are resultants from the grace which provided 
the atonement, and are the purchase of the 
great sacrifice. 

It is therefore needless^ in this study, to 
enlarge on the question of Christian evolu- 
tion; for nearly everything depends on the 
particular ideas which each one attaches to 
his own use of the word. If he is, first of all, 
Christian in sentiment, believing heartily in 
the Scriptures, deferring in all things to their 
authority, and only seeking their right in- 
terpretation, there is nothing in any proper 
conception of vicarious atonement to give 



Atonement. 139 

him any trouble. All that belongs to man 
as a creature of God belongs to him as a re- 
deemed subject of grace. His whole being, 
with its tendencies and aptitudes, with its 
vital forces and capabilities, belongs to the 
Divine plan of life, growth, development, 
and progress, founded in redemption, giving 
ample room for all the evolution that can 
harmonize with God^s Word, or subsist in 
connection with the essentials of Christian 
faith. It is only necessary to hold that the 
redemptive scheme includes the creation of 
the race as it is, with the laws the Creator 
enstamped upon it, in order to see that there 
is no antagonism between the law of life and 
progress, under which humanity exists, and 
the evangelical doctrine of atonement — noth- 
ing whatever that calls for a modification of 
the doctrine as here presented. 



VII. 

Iisr the outcome of this study, let us see 
that the office of the High Priesthood of the 
Son of God be duly honored in the work of 
bringing God and man together. His priestly 
function is the ground of all his peculiar 
relations, as Mediator, Advocate, and Inter- 
cessor. There is one God and one Mediator 
between God and men — ^the Man Christ Je- 
sus. As Mediator he is the daysman, the go- 
between, the equal of either party, the rep- 
resentative of both, the only being in the 
universe qualified to meet the extraordinary 
emergency. God was in Christ reconciling 
the world to himself, and hath committed 
to men the ministry of reconciliation. Be- 
ing equal with God, he assumed ow: nature, 
and offered the approved sacrifice by which 
he obtained eternal redemption for us, and 
140 



Atonement. 141 

passed into the heavens as our forerunner, 
where the mercy-seat, sprinkled with his own 
blood, is the throne of grace, ever accessible, 
to which all penitents are invited to come 
with boldness. This is God's work, and it is 
marvelous in our eyes. It reveals the Al- 
mighty as ^^a just God and a Savior/^ From 
the loftiness of his throne, exalted above all 
our conceptions of greatness, he stoops and 
yearns for the return of the alienated, and 
seeks to draw them in penitence to the foot 
of the cross for forgiveness. 

The full reason for the necessity of the 
sacrifice may not be known to us; but this 
we know, that God would not have required 
it without good reason. It was certainly nec- 
essary to maintain the integrity of God^s gov- 
enment and bis authority as a ruler, while 
extending onercy to transgressors, and as a 
declaration of righteousness, and also to 
bring out some phases of the Divine char- 
acter which could not have been so well 
revealed in any other way. But these are 



143 Atonement. 

only parts of liis reasons, while the higher 
motives, hidden in the depths of his being 
and in his relations to the moral universe, 
are quite beyond the reach of our thought. 

By a pirocess of reasoning we might advance 
step by step to apprehend the fact that the 
law of Grod, being holy and unfluctuating, 
when broken, would demand its penalty, 
which demand might not be arbitrarily set 
aside; but when we see God incarnate in 
the person of his Son come into the condi- 
tions of our life, bear our burdens, and lay 
down his life in sacrifice for our ciii, we ob- 
tain a new impression of him as a God of 
compassion, a lover of men, and as a lover 
of righteousness, as well as a more exalted 
conception of his law as an expression of love 
and justice blending in one glorious act of 
redemption. 

In the conception of God thus gained, w© 
avoid two extremes which are alike dishonor- 
ing to him, as well as dangerous to men. The 
first is the pagan, and sometimes an old Jew- 



ATONEME>;rT. 143 

ish notion, which makes him the stem arbiter 
of fate, clothed in terrible majesty, content 
with his unapproachable greatness, offended 
and flaming with anger at the violation of his 
law, and refusing to abate the rigor of his 
wrath without the payment of the last far- 
thing. Certain Calvinistic theories of atone- 
ment are adjusted to this conception of 
God. The other extreme looks upon him as 
more than humanly tender, even to weakness, 
grieving like a father over the waywardness 
of erring children, overlooking their faults, 
and begging them to give up their evil ways 
and accept forgiveness without regard to 
the claims of justice or the necessities of 
good government. But God is neither the 
one nor the other. He loves righteousness, 
hates iniquity, is kind and loving, ready to 
forgive on- proper terms, and will by no 
means clear the persistently guilty. Impeni- 
tence is as offensive to him as rebellion ever 
was. The atonement can not cover the sin 
of persistent unbelief. The willful rejection 



144 Atonement. 

of Christ cuts off participation in the final 
benefits of redemption. As the atonement 
was not a legal setting aside of the verdict 
of condemnation against sinners, by reason 
of the substitute paying the full price of their 
disobedience^ but a gracious provision 
whereby forgiveness becomes possible through 
repentance and faith, so the conditionality of 
forgiveness is as real as was the sacrifice which 
made the offer of pardon possible. As God 
could not save sinners without a Savior, so 
he can not save them with a Savior denied 
and contemned. As the Savior himself could 
not save without the shedding of his blood, 
so neither can he now save those who reject 
him and treat his blood as an unholy thing. 
He it is ^Vhom God hath set forth to be a 
propitiation through faith in his blood, to 
declare his righteousness for the forgiveness 
of sins that are past^' — ^and the '^^faith in Ws 
blood'^ is as necessary to make the propitia- 
tion available for the sinner as was the shed- 
ding of the blood itself. If so, then the 



Atonemen^t. 145 

folly of trusting to the fact of the atonement 
for salvation, without accepting and honoring 
it, is manifest to every one. ^^He that be- 
lieveth on the Son of God hath everlasting 
life; and he that helieveth not the Son shall 
not see life, but the wrath of God abideth 
on him/^ 

To hold that men are forgiven and saved 
simply because Christ died for them is one 
of the weaknesses of ignorance, the rock on 
w'hich many split. It grows out of thinking 
of the atonement as a contrivance to save 
men without their consent — a sort of mechan- 
ical device to lift them to heaven, instead of 
a gracious provision to secure them a fitness 
for it. Such a scheme is not the gospel; 
and all who trust in it lean on a broken reed, 
while those who spend time and strength in 
belaboring it, as if it were held by the evan- 
gelical Churches, spend their strength for 
naught. Salvation "through the blood of 
the Lamb'' is not by mechanism nor by syl- 
logism. It requires the concurrence of the 
10 



146 Atonement. 

will and the unreserved surrender of the 
heart. 

Still the claim is persistently put forth that 
repentance is the adequate ground of pardon, 
so that not only is it proper for God to for- 
give sins solely on this ground, but that God 
is bound to do it, or can not afford not to 
do it. The assumption is that repentance 
makes it right in Divine government to for- 
give all who repent, and consequently wrong 
not to afford all such the necessary helps and 
encouragements to repentance. Under exist- 
ing conditions there is apparent force in this. 
Men are called to repentance with the as- 
surance of pardon; but this is under the 
gospel. Repentance is necessary to pardon, 
but it is not the ground of pardon. The 
ground is the atonement. What the terms 
would be, or would have been, without the 
atonement, no one can know. In fact, we 
can know nothing about the world of might- 
have-been. We have good reason to believe 
that without the atonement there would have 



Atonement. 147 

been neither men nor repentance. The exe- 
ented penalty would have cut off the first of- 
fenders without posterity. That would have 
ended the race of Adam. Too little account 
is taken of this fact. The death of Christ 
secured the existence of the race, the proba- 
tion allowed us, the power to repent, and all 
the advantages that life affords. Why, then, 
talk of repentance without the atonement? 
Why think of forgiveness without the death of 
Christ? Such thinking is absurd, or, rather, 
preposterous. It omits the major proposi- 
tion. Christ is our life. Because he lives, 
we live also. It requires thought to place 
Christ before Adam and the atonement be^ 
fore the creation of man; but we must think 
these identical thoughts before we grasp the 
true situation. Christ was verily foreordained 
before the foundation of the world was laid. 
This plainly-declared fact has meaning in it. 
He was the Lamb slain from the foundation 
of the world. Eedemption was not an experi- 
ment. God knew what he was about. He 



148 Atonement. 

made man capable of going wrong, saw that 
lie would go wrong, and made provision to 
give him another chance. That provision 
for another chance was in what we call the 
atonement. It was not wrought out to com- 
pletion till Calvary; but in God^s knowledge 
Calvary was so certain that all of the new 
probation was based upon it. Its merits 
rolled back to the first transgression, as well 
as forward to the end of time. It is time we 
were learning to appreciate the atonement. 
Human life, probation, repentance, pardon, 
adoption, sanctification, all come from the 
atonement, from the redemption which is in 
Christ Jesus, our Lord. 

Eepentance, as the ground of pardon, with- 
out the sacrificial death of Christ, is ably 
discussed in nearly all works on systematic 
theology, and such discussion seems neces- 
sary to the completeness of the argument, 
whatever theory of atonement is favored; but 
in this study it is passed as an incidental 
matter, on the ground that God would not 



Atonement. 149 

do an unnecessary thing; and as he did most 
certainly give his Son to die for sin and for 
sinners, there must have been most urgent 
necessity for it. In actual fact repentance 
and pardon are preached in the name of 
Christ. This is God^s plan of saving sinners. 
We know of no other. We do not believe 
there is another. This plan has a place for 
repentance, makes it possible, and assigns it 
an office which nothing else can fill; but it 
treats repentance and faith and obedience, 
and everything in men that might be sup- 
posed to be meritorious in God's estimation, 
as fruits of atonement. On this ground we 
stand, and for this reason we reject every 
suggestion that any of these things could be, 
or could fill the office they now fill in the 
redemptive scheme, if there had been no 
atonement. 

After all, the question recurs, AVhy could 
not the Infinite God, with all the resources 
of his being and of his universe, save sinners 
without the expensive process which he or- 



150 Atonement. 

dained? Why not some shorter road to this 
end than the incarnation, death, and resur- 
rection of his only Son? Where was his 
omnipotence? Where his sovereignty? Why 
not, with the majestic sweep of his right arm, 
wipe sin from the universe? Men will reason 
thus; and they must be heard patiently. The 
argument, if allowed, is against the exist- 
ence of evil at all. If sin might he brushed 
away by Divine power, it should never have 
gained footing in the fair creation. If its 
occurrence, or the removal of it, were a ques- 
tion of power, everything relating to it would 
assume a different aspect. Or if natural and 
moral evil were subject to the same law, the 
problem of the latter would be modified. 
Natural evil pertains to the physical universe, 
and follows the order of natural law, its re- 
sults coming of necessity; but moral evil be- 
longs to a different department of creation, 
and has to do with moral beings and with 
moral laws, quite distinct from natural laws. 
If this were not true, and if the moral free- 



Atonement. 161 

dom of rational beings were not a factor, the 
problem would be much simpler than it is. 
But here is the adamantine fact. Intelli- 
gence and freedom are essential to morality, 
to moral good as well as to moral evil, to vir- 
tue as well as to vice. Sin belongs only to 
the realm of freedom. It is not a substance, 
but an event. It is an act, an act of a respon- 
sible agent, in willing if not in doing some- 
thing tangible, or that takes the full charac- 
ter of an act. Behind every sin is the spir- 
itual entity, the personal agent, who is en- 
dowed with rationality and freedom. This 
agent thinks, knows, wills, is intelligent and 
responsible, and therefore is not subject to 
the natural law that governs matter. Force 
governs matter; but force has no place in the 
moral world. One might as well attempt to 
persuade a marble statue to leap from its 
pedestal as to undertake to coerce a human 
soul into virtuous obedience. Motive, not 
force, rules in the rational world; and motive 
influences, but does not coerce. The mind 



152 Atonement. 

considers motives, weighs them, and makes 
choice among them when they conflict, often 
with an alacrity that eludes memory, and 
with a freedom that seems spontaneous, but 
so that the free acceptance of one leaves the 
inherent power of an opposite choice intact. 
Even God acts in all things with motive or 
design. We can not conceive of him as doing 
anything without a purpose. That we do not 
see his motive does not argue its non-existence. 
As no power beyond his nature impels him, 
his action is always free, and always in con- 
sonance with his attributes. He can not act 
contrary to his nature. He can not do and 
not do. He can not deny himself. He can not 
maintain government over rational and re- 
sponsible beings without permitting the exer- 
cise of volition to the extent of an evil choice. 
In this ability to choose lies the ground of 
responsibility, and the source of moral desert, 
whether good or ill, the source of all that 
makes character. It is therefore clear that 
power could not hinder sin without destroy- 



Atonement. 163 

ing freedom to the extent of nullifying ac- 
countability and obliterating moral distinc- 
tion. If there be any such thing as physical 
law, it can apply only to physics. If any law, 
natural or supernatural, is adapted to govern 
material things by coercion, its presence in 
the spiritual world is an obtrusion, with de- 
structive or revolutionary results. Law that 
governs spirit must be adapted to spirit, and 
operate in harmony with the nature of spirit. 
This excludes coercion, even by the power of 
God. Force from God would destroy freedom 
as readily as would force from the physical 
world. Hence salvation from sin must be 
studied not as a question of power, but as a 
question of moral achievement. It is not as 
to what God could do by his omnipotence, 
but as to what he has done in the exercise of 
his wisdom and love. 

With these principles in mind, let us sum 
up the facts. God chose to create a world of 
rational beings capable of moral action. He 
invested them with the necessary power, the 



154 Atonement. 

power of choice. Some of them abused that 
power, and sin is in the world. Whether by 
direct permission of God or not, it is here. 
It has entered the world of humanity, has 
touched the essence of the human soul, has 
breathed upon it a corrupting taint, and given 
an evil bent to all its faculties. In the soul 
sin has become a malady, a moral leprosy, a 
spiritual gangrene, eating its vital energies 
and inducing spiritual death. How can it be 
eradicated? "N^ot by might, nor by power, 
but by my Spirit, saith the Lord.^^ It can be 
done only by moral means, or by spiritual 
agencies working in harmony with the in- 
vincible nature of the soul. Hence the in- 
adequacy of omnipotence alone. The right- 
eousness of God, moral justice, and the inflex- 
ible law of holiness, must come into the ac- 
count. The authority of the Divine govern- 
ment, whose right sin has disregarded, must 
be vindicated, so that God can not only be 
just and righteous, but be declared so to be, 
as well as a merciful and gracious sovereign, 



Atonement. 166 

in dispensing pardon to penitents. Here is 
the problem of redemption, the necessity of 
atonement. Here is the exigency in God^s 
moral government which gave occasion for 
the Priestly office of the Son of God, and 
rendered his incarnation and sacrifice indis- 
pensable in order to avert the penalty of sin 
and make salvation possible. This exigency 
was not a fiction nor a rhetorical trope. It 
was as real as i-s righteousness, and as formi- 
dable as omnipotence. Its occurrence has been 
the dismay of finite reason through the ages; 
for reason and faith stand aghast in the pres- 
ence of the power and ravages of sin. The 
need of Divine intervention is apparent, but 
the method of the remedy is unknown till 
revealed in the presence of the incarnation of 
Deity in human flesh. Then the dreadfulness 
of sin is seen as never before, and the stern- 
ness of the demand for a Divine sacrifice be- 
comes a factor in our apprehension as distinct 
and clear as is our perception of justice as an 
attribute of God. 



166 Atonement. 

When taken into the understanding to the 
extent of possibility, this moral exigency, with 
all its depths of mystery, clothes the stupen- 
dous fact of the incarnation and suffering of 
Jesus Christ with characteristics worthy of In- 
finite Wisdom and Love, showing occasion for 
his mission and results commensurate with its 
sublime purpose. But take away from the re- 
demptive scheme the absolute necessity of the 
sacrifice, because of the deserts of sin and the 
claims of righteous government; take away 
the invincible freedom of the will and the im- 
mutable nature of violated law — eliminate 
from the government of God this moral exi- 
gency — and you destroy forever the possibility 
of finding either love, mercy, justice, or right- 
eousness in the advent and crucifixion of the 
Son of God. If there was no exigency requir- 
ing it, no actual necessity for it, growing out 
of moral conditions — ^if salvation had been 
possible without it — ^if by reason of any natu- 
ral relation he sustained to unredeemed hu- 
manity, God could have come to the rescue 



Atonement. 157 

by supreme prerogative, and arrested the tide 
of evil without the sacrifice, then the atone- 
ment was needless, and the suffering of Christ, 
being without necessity, was purposeless and 
cruel. Instead of being a display of the 
Father's love and a demonstration of right- 
eousness, his death becomes a spectacular 
mockery. Neither justice nor love could ap- 
prove an unnecessary sacrifice; nor could a 
mere pretentious display accord with any per- 
fection of the Deity. He who denies the ex- 
istence of a moral exigency, or its possibility 
in Divine government, with the alternatives 
of the perishing of the race in the loins of 
the first transgressor on the one hand, and the 
interposition of God with a Divine sacrifice 
on the other, cuts off all possibility of giving 
a rational reason for the undisputed facts in 
the history of Christ — easting upon the whole 
scene of Calvary the dark shadow of an unreal 
pretentiousness and a cruel deception. If the 
incarnation and sacrifice were not imperative 
on the ground of necessity, they were at least 



168 Atonement. 

meaningless and misleading as to their de- 
sign. 

The fact stands forth abundantly attested 
that Jesus Christ died for the ungodly. ^^God 
eommendeth his love towards us^ in that while 
we were yet sinners Christ died for us.^V 
^^When we were yet without strength, in due 
time Christ died for the ungodly .^^ The grand 
purpose of his life culminated in his death. 
The gospel accounts for it all in setting him 
forth as a ^^propitiation for the sins of the 
world.^' According to his own words, his 
blood ^Vas shed for many for the remission of 
sins.^^ In it the typical blood of the Passover 
was fulfilled. "Christ our Passover is sacri- 
ficed for us.^^ Because he died in sacrifice sin- 
ners can come to God through him, and God 
can receive them graciously without impair- 
ment of his law, or any slight to the require- 
ments of public justice. The whole proceed- 
ing was governmental, and its justification 
was in the occasion for it, its necessity. This 



Atonement. 159 

is the mystery of mysteries, the hidden wis- 
dom which was not made known in the earlier 
ages, but is now manifested to the glory of 
God^s grace throughout the Church on earth 
and in heaven. 

Thus the priestly office of our Lord was 
more than a name, more than a picturesque 
fulfillment of Jewish types, more than an 
Oriental symbol of an unreal expiation; for 
to the eye of enlightened faith it appears, as 
it is in reality, the embodiment of the wisdom 
and love of God, the impregnable foundation 
of the hope of humanity. It was by filling 
this office to perfection, and meeting the 
great moral dilemma through the offering up 
of himself that he obtained the right to save 
men. His atonement was at once the match- 
less demonstration of God^s intrinsic holiness 
and abhorrence of sin, and the most glorious 
manifestation of his love to men. In the pres- 
ence of this mighty achievement through sac- 
rifice the intelligent universe bows reverently 



160 Atonement. 

"before "the Lamb slain'' and the Savior ex- 
alted, exclaiming, "0 the depth of the riches 
both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! 
How unsearchable are his judgments and his 
ways past finding out!'' 



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